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
Within the Pages of Lore
Get your Silmarillion off of the shelf. Close your eyes, let your book fall open at random, and put your finger down on the page. Your challenge is to create a fanwork using that quote. 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 Hidden City by Lady MSM
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Merry Christmas
Christmas Day, 1935
Connecticut
In the end, it hadn’t been the market crash or the end of Prohibition that had ruined them. Turgon Gates was a practical man, and he’d had more than enough money set aside to keep the network running. No, what had ruined them had been Maeglin. Apparently he’d had some secret deal with the Angband mob, letting them in on the family’s inside information, enough to make them able to do a complete takeover.
It had been six months, and every time Idril closed her eyes she could still see the blood and broken glass, hear the gunshots, see her father on the floor with a bullet wound in his chest. Sometimes she still woke up from horrible dreams of Maeglin holding a gun to her son’s head. But as angry as she’d been with Maeglin, it still hadn’t been easy to see her husband blast a hole in his heart with a shotgun.
As soon as Maeglin had breathed his last, they’d grabbed what money and necessities they could find and fled to the train station. No time to mourn friends and family; the cops would be coming any minute and no one wanted to be mixed up in that. The soonest train was to Connecticut, where Idril had recalled her cousin Gil lived, and the three of them along with Voronwe had wound up on Gil’s doorstep in the peaceful town of Gray Haven in the middle of the night. Gil had been very obliging, and the four of them had been staying with him ever since.
Now it was Christmas morning, and Idril watched fondly as Earendil and little Elwing Bergman opened their presents and squealed with glee. Elwing was an orphan, the ward of Gil’s old friend Cirdan Fellini, and the granddaughter of the famous Luthien duBois and Beren Bergman. Idril remembered reading about them in the papers when she was a girl; headlines screaming things like SOUTHERN BELLE ELOPES WITH BOUNTY HUNTER and GOVERNOR OF LOUISIANA DISOWNS DAUGHTER. Luthien duBois had been called the prettiest girl in America back in the Gay Nineties; now this sad little curly-haired girl was all that remained of that illustrious family.
Elwing smiled softly as she opened the present Idril had picked out especially for her—a beautifully bound first edition of Anne of Green Gables. “Oh, Aunt Idril, it’s lovely. Thank you so much.”
“You’ll like that book,” said Earendil brightly. “It’s really a girls’ book but I liked it a lot when Ma read it to me. Wow, a train set! Santa must’ve gotten my letter after all.”
“I sent it to him special delivery,” said Tuor with a grin. “Wasn’t going to take any chances with my boy’s Christmas list.” It was amazing how, after everything, he could still smile so easily. It took real effort on Idril’s part these days.
Gil laughed. “Looks like you’re more responsible than I thought you were, old sport! Say, what time is it? I expect Mrs. O’Riley will have lunch for us now. Put down the presents, kids, and we’ll all go have something to eat, eh?”
Reluctantly the kids put down their toys, and Gil and Cirdan shepherded them out of the room. Idril began to rise, but Tuor put his hand on her arm.
“Hold on a minute. I have a present for you.”
“You got a present for me? But…” With a sudden guilty shock, Idril realized that in the midst of all the sadness and stress and concern over the children, she’d forgotten to get her own husband a Christmas present. “I don’t have anything for you. I forgot. I’m so sorry…”
“Don’t be sorry. You’ve been miserable, anyone could see that, and you’ve been stronger than plenty of people would be. That’s why I wanted to get you something.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small package. Inside was a photograph in a small silver frame—a photograph of her father, happy and smiling, holding a tiny baby Earendil. Idril gasped.
“Where did you…”
“I grabbed it from your dad’s office before we left Chicago. Forgot all about it, but then I found it in my things a few weeks ago. Thought you might want to have it. Oh, God, you’re crying, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”
“No, it’s all right,” said Idril with a sniff. “I’m not upset. I’m crying because I’m happy. It’s beautiful.” She wiped her eyes and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you, darling.”
Tuor smiled, and pulled her into his arms. “I love you. Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas.”
