So like we do a challenge every year that focuses on the history and pop culture of a decade, and this year we're jetting back to the 1980s for a month of wicked rad fanworks based on our mondo list of '80s prompts.

Now if you can't quite dig Túrin in a Members Only jacket or Daeron grokking Maglor's latest album on his Walkman, just take a chill pill. It's no big whoop if your fanwork has nothing to do with the 1980s! You can use the prompts in whatever dope ways your imagination takes you, and you can totally use any part of the prompt or related to the prompt. So like if you wanted to use your favorite line from one of the TV or movie prompts, you can totally rock that. Or just the title if that's your speed. Now if you want to get really radical and put your characters back in the '80s, that's allowed too of course. No duh.

We're hoping for lots of tubular fanworks to veg out with at the start of summer or winter, depending on what part of the world you're reppin'. If you want to find a buttload of '80s prompts compiled by our bodacious challenge mod Grundy, you can score those here.

Mad props too go to Anérea for this month's stamps and banner, which you like for sure want to collect this month when we hightail back to the '80s. Epic!

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New Fanworks

Wound Care by StarSpray [Writing]

He’d ventured into the little fishing village in search of food and maybe a dry place to sleep for a night of rain and wind—he hadn’t expected this, to be bullied into a hot meal and a healer’s attention.

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Swelling from the Sea by annarobots [Writing]

Tuor and Elwing’s recreational sailing excursion goes terribly awry when a carnivorous siren casts her gaze upon their vessel. With her song, she enchants the mariners and boards with evil intent. She kills and eats their crewman, she demands Tuor’s hand in marriage, and for dessert, she plans to eat Elwing. A vile, terrible creature is she!
And then things take a turn for the worse.

A fill for the 2026 Rare Kink Buffet, a Bad Guys Made Them Do It story.

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i am not there, i do not sleep by StarSpray [Series]

When uneasy dreams bring him back into Beleriand, Daeron finds a pair of twins who have lost their home, and an enemy who has lost himself. The Shadow's reach is growing ever longer, and if they are to survive, they must do it together.

Read more ...

Living Stars, Living Bright by Elrond's Library [Writing]

She shook her head, quietly reveling in the physicality of having her wife’s hands on her. “How can I hold you at fault for the events of the past centuries when you have not been here, able to act?”

Indis has been summoned to the Halls of Vairë on behalf of one thought lost.

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Foundations by AdmirableMonster [Writing]

The Mouth of Sauron visits the Witch-King in her newly-founded kingdom of Angmar.

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Updated Fanworks

Laws and Customs (Cover and Art Edition) by AdmirableMonster [Multimedia]

While searching for a series of his lost notes on Gondolin, the scholar Pengolodh is taken by bandits and used cruelly.

Rescued by a friend and taken to the remnants of Melian's Girdle, he begins a slow road to recovery that will lead to the apprehension of the attackers, the judgement of the king, and unexpected friendships and cultural exchanges.

Read more ...

Shaped From Rock by Fuin [Writing]

A Dwarven merchant travels from Nogrod to the far south in search of greater wealth – and finds something else entirely. 

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The Name of the Fire by Kios [Writing]

Some journeys cannot be lightened, and some destinies cannot be commanded.

Fëanor rejects Mandos. He burns Halls and leaves ash behind him, as defiant in death as he was in life. 

In the Void, he encounters something else. 

 

Read more ...

A Song Amidst His Torment by Elrond's Library [Writing]

Of course it was a trap.
Maitimo has to survive. He must. But what price is too high to pay for survival?

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A Thousand Winds that Blow by StarSpray [Writing]

When uneasy dreams bring him back into Beleriand, Daeron finds a pair of twins who have lost their home, and an enemy who has lost himself. The Shadow's reach is growing ever longer, and if they are to survive, they must do it together.

Read more ...

Nasyalossë by Lovimmy3365 [Writing]

Erestor lay up against a tree, brown washed to black in the wet of the snow. The black disc of the new moon sailed across the dark sky. Erestor wished it were gone. He had no need to look into dark eyes any longer.

He was dying.

(AKA Erestor unwittingly travels back in time to the days between the Dagor Bragollach and the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, meets the sons of Feanor, Thingol and his ilk, many Laiquendi, many Dwarves, and Men besides, and THEN decides to solve the drowning of Beleriand himself. This has nothing to do with his personal problems. Nope. Not at all. Erestor is having regular feelings.)

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From That Rubble by StarSpray [Writing]

Fëanor shrugged, studying the contents of his wine glass. “Something must be done about that house. It will fall down eventually.”
“It does not follow that it must be you that tears it down single-handedly. Are you sure you do not want help?”
“It’s not as though I have much else to do. I need to build something new there,” he said after a few moments. “To do that, I must first clear away the old and broken things.”

Decades out of Mandos, too many things in Fëanor's life remain broken. He can't do anything except wait for his sons to come to him, but he can do something about the old and crumbling house where they once lived. 

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The Mirror Crack'd by AdmirableMonster [Writing]

Rescued from a brutal Angband hunt, an ex-thrall with a strange and powerful artifact embedded in his spine is brought to Himring, for it is one of the only places in Beleriand which welcomes such folk. Though he has no memories of his life before, Anniavas slowly becomes accustomed to his new life and finds he has a queer connection with Maedhros, Himring's lord. As their intimacy grows, however, so do the dangers surrounding them, both without and within. What secrets are hidden inside the depths of Anniavas's lost memories--and how will those with whom he is forging and deepening bonds react, when those secrets are at last revealed?

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One Flesh, One Soul. Part I by FellFireFan [Writing]

As beautiful as he is dangerous, Aegnor, an elven prince, stands against the looming shadows of Angband. Brother to Galadriel, he commands the siege with a fierce intensity, a duty that exacts a heavy toll on him. But beneath the iron walls he has built lies a broken soul, haunted by a devastating trauma and a well of deep, guarded secrets. His demons, kept at bay by his unyielding intensity that is both his greatest gift and his biggest curse. 

Little does our Noldorin prince know that a chance encounter with a terrified young girl of men will set him on a collision course, igniting an extraordinary bond wrought with challenges, sacrifices, and intense love that threatens to unravel his guarded heart, and all he keeps within it.

Brace yourself for Part I of this captivating tale, where the primal power of love and devestating loss will tear lives apart forever.

Read more ...

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