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
Holiday Party
No matter if you're in the Northern or Southern hemisphere, it's a time of year to think about holidays. Whether you're bundling up in blankets or slipping a swimsuit into your suitcase, we invite you to an SWG holiday party! 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 Small and Secret Things by Dawn Felagund
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Love in Pearls (a.k.a. "Wet Elves")
Today's tribble (300 words) is dual-purposed. For one, it is inspired by the Word of the Day, bibelot. For another, it is dedicated with fondest wishes to Cheryl, who asked for a birthday drabble called "Wet Elves." Well, it's only one wet Elf and I've chosen a different title, but I hope that it suffices. Happy birthday, my dear!
Eärwen watches her soon-to-be husband construct a special gift for her on the beach of Alqualondë.
He didn't know that she watched and she did her best to hide, ducking behind the drapes in her bedroom overlooking the sea. He was young, just come of age, having only recently lost the awkward boniness of youth. Nay, he was awkward no longer, she thought, watching as he glanced furtively about him. A tiny smile tightened the corner of his mouth and she imagined mischief in his eyes, sparkling like evening light upon the water.
Convinced that no one watched, he let his robes slide away. With a gasp, she ducked out of sight behind the curtain, hiding her eyes. I should not look! … but she did, creeping out by degrees to watch him ease into the warm seawater.
She did not know why he had come to the shores of Eldamar without informing her of his intentions, as he had done--with delight--so many times before. At the last, there had been wine, heady conversation. I always thought, she confided, laughing, in the space between private thought and spoken word, that the man I married would spell his intentions upon the sand of the beach in pearls, where I might see from the highest tower--
He was not long in the sea, for the pearls were plentiful, and as Laurelin began to brighten towards noontide, he emerged, dripping, with golden light sculpting the planes of his body, no longer the familiar form of her childhood friend but someone different. Beloved.
Kneeling naked on the sand, he set to task, returning again and again to the sea for more pearls, until there was a shimmering rainbow upon the beach spelling--what? She eased full from behind the curtain. She knew not. For it was the Elf--not trinkets recovered for her delight--that so captivated her.
Chapter End Notes
Today's Word:
bibelot BEE-buh-loh, noun:
A small decorative object without practical utility; a trinket.
Bibelot is from French, from Old French beubelot, beubelet, "a small jewel, a trinket," from a reduplication of bel, "beautiful," from Latin bellus, "pretty, handsome." It is related to bauble.
