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Mereth Aderthad 2025 Interview with Flora-lass by Anérea. Featured poet for "Cherished Antagonist, Despised Protagonist - A Defense of Elu Thingol".

Tolkien's poetry is one of the hallmarks of the legendarium, though like poetry in general, it tends ot produce mixed reactions from readers. A poet who brings to life the musicality of Middle-earth, Flora-lass will be presenting a poem inspired by Stella Getreuer-Kostrouch's presentation, "Cherished antagonist, despised protagonist - a defence of Elu Thingol" at Mereth Aderthad 2025. Anérea spoke with Flora-lass about her poetry, getting involved with fandom later in life, and the appeal of Thingol as a subject of fanworks.

You can read Anérea's interview with Flora-lass here.


A Spring in the Highlands

Jul. 7th, 2025 10:38 pm
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[personal profile] narya_flame posting in [community profile] tolkienshortfanworks
Author: Narya
Title:
A Spring in the Highlands
Characters: Original Characters; Maglor (mentioned indirectly)
Pairing: N/A
Text type / Format: Ficlet
Source / Fandom: The Silmarillion
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Word Count: 828
Summary: On a summer camping trip, Harrison and Theo listen to the river.
Author notes: Written for the Tolkien Short Fanworks challenge, July 2025. Harrison and Theo are original characters who first appeared in my Paradox 'verse, although this piece sits in the Summerland AU, a crossover between Paradox and [personal profile] spiced_wine 's Dark Prince 'verse. They are friends of Maglor, referred to here by his alias Mark Lowry. In my fics, Maglor survives through to modern times and does not go back to Valinor. Harrison's cousin Claire, also mentioned here, was the first of their group to befriend Maglor in both 'verses.


Read more... )

Character of the Month: Marhwini

Jul. 5th, 2025 10:02 pm
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[personal profile] daughterofshadows posting in [community profile] silwritersguild
A banner of two hand drawn horses, a blue one in the front and a brown one in the back. The blue one mostly obscures the brown one. Text above the horses reads: Character of the Month: Marhwini by Secondborn

Marhwini of the Éothéod is a character who exists between books. He is, in the words of his biographer Secondborn, "a representative of a people who didn’t even exist," appearing in neither The Silmarillion nor The Lord of the Rings. But as Secondborn articulates, this doesn't mean Marhwini is unimportant. Her biography of Marhwini not only compiles the details of the life of a character who is likely unfamiliar to many Tolkien fans but also explores why this character matters. Important to both the histories of Rohan and Gondor, Marhwini is a character who influences events in the legendarium from across the centuries and whose actions exemplify the essential theme of the value of friendship and allegiance.

You can read Secondborn's biography of Marhwini here.


[admin post] Admin Post: July Challenge

Jul. 1st, 2025 11:09 pm
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[personal profile] hhimring posting in [community profile] tolkienshortfanworks
Thank you for your engagement with this community during the past month!

Here is the tolkienshortfanworks challenge for July.

The thematic challenge for this month is: flowing water.

Here is a choice of three quotation prompts, all taken from LOTR:

1)
They could hear few words, but it seemed plain to them that the song was a rain-song, as sweet as showers on dry hills, that told the tale of a river from the spring in the highlands to the Sea far below.

2)
For a moment Frodo stood near the brink and let the water flow over his tired feet. It was cold but its touch was clean, and as he went on and it mounted to his knees, he felt that the stain of travel and all weariness was washed from his limbs.

3)
The lights died down, and the glow of the trees faded; but outside under the arch they could see old Treebeard standing, motionless, with his arms raised above his head. The bright stars peered out of the sky, and lit the falling water as it spilled on to his fingers and head, and dripped, dripped, in hundreds of silver drops on to his feet.


The formal challenge this time is:
Write a concrete poem or shape poem that is in the shape of a drop of water or drops.
The simplest way to do that is to make your line lengths fill in the outline of the shape.

Usual reminder that in order to post the fill to this community or to the related collection on AO3 (linked in a sticky post at the top), the fanwork can only have a word count up to 1000 words and must be linked to a Tolkien fandom.
Rec lists and podfics can be posted as fills for thematic prompts, as long as the fanworks concerned meet those conditions.

Also we continue to welcome other pieces unrelated to any challenge, of course, including cross-posts and older stories, as long as they meet the criteria!

Rebuilding journal search again

Jun. 30th, 2025 03:18 pm
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[personal profile] alierak posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance
We're having to rebuild the search server again (previously, previously). It will take a few days to reindex all the content.

Meanwhile search services should be running, but probably returning no results or incomplete results for most queries.
daughterofshadows: A photograph of a nebula and stars (Default)
[personal profile] daughterofshadows posting in [community profile] silwritersguild
Mereth Aderthad 2025 Interview with Anérea and Shadow. Featured artist and author for "How to Make a Star From a Tree: The Science of Telperion and Laurelin."

Anérea and Shadow are the featured artist and featured writer, respectively, for Zhie's Mereth Aderthad 2025 presentation, "How To Make a Star From a Tree: The Science of Telperion and Laurelin." They sat down together to chat about their work on Zhie's presentation and on Mereth Aderthad more broadly, as both are involved as volunteers for the event, and Shadow has also written a story for Maglor's presentation "Gil-galad was an Elven King: Kingship and Personhood in the last High King of the Noldor." They spoke about the appeal of light in Tolkien's world, about achieving freedom from perfectionism and imposter syndrome, and the special role that fanworks and fan communities play in so many of our lives.

You can read and listen to their conversation here.


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