New Challenge: Title Track
Tolkien's titles range from epic to lyrical to metaphorical. This month's challenge selected 125 of them as prompts for fanworks.
We always like to start the new year fresh and with creativity. To that end, we begin the year with an amnesty, allowing you to create a fanwork for any of the previous year’s challenges. To celebrate the SWG’s 20th anniversary year, we’re expanding that in our second ever Jubilee. (Yes, we know Jubilees are traditionally every 25 or 50 years. We’re not that patient, so we’re making our own Jubilee tradition—do one when it feels right.)
Any challenge from January 2017 onward is fair game for the amnesty this January! If there’s a challenge you’ve been eyeing that was before your time, or one you’ve been kicking yourself for missing, this is your moment. If you started a challenge response but never finished it, here’s your chance. Done them all? We are in awe. Also, you can create for any of them—just make sure you post to the Jubilee challenge to get your stamp.
If you’re all worn out from all 2024 threw at you but ready to go on a fanworks binge, the Jubilee includes commenting stamps.
During the Jubilee, you can collect any existing challenge stamp. The only new stamps we’ll be giving out are the Jubilee-specific ones.
There are a few caveats and mod requests:
This challenge opened in .

A selection of brief writings (mostly conforming to drabbles but some veer into dribble territory) from the SWG events on January 18-19, 2025.

Notes and writings on Celebrimbor, following the 30-Day Character Study challenge prompts.

Short interaction between Maedhros and Caranthir, written during an instadrabbling session.

Cirdan watches and waits, while the world goes down into the dark.

Short fanworks for the following prompts:
• hurt, delusions, tandem, fly
• The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea.
• Oh, this spacious sky/Is not poetry enough for our swelling lungs
• Smells like teen spirit generator: annoying siblings
• From a random page of On Fairy-Stories: beauties, terrors, sun, power
• Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy.

In the halls of the Maker, the Children sleep, until a bell sounds.

Finrod answers a tutor's question before Caranthir can

Drabbles written for Jubilee, fulfilling prompts from Potluck and other previous challenges.

Maglor, a Jedi, gets roped into investigating the theft of the Silmarilli and some Sindarin treasures. His partner? The Singer Daeron.

Netyalindë was walking home slowly, after the Valar announced the horror that had taken place in Alqualondë, promising it would be the last time such a deed is seen in their lands.
Her eyes had gotten used to the darkness around her she thought. Or perhaps it was that she knew those streets like the back of her hand-stitched pocket that currently held in secret the brooch that Fëanáro had made for her for her wedding to his second-born son.

Some drabbles from the 1/19/2025 instabrabbling event

Maitimo held his baby brother in his arms, and was surprised when the baby started to emit a melodious sound.

Telperion’s light was bathing Oromë’s Wood in a quiet and eerie atmosphere that Tyelkormo loved. He alone among the elves was awake at this time of the night...

Escape attempt from Nan Elmoth

Melkor returns

Estel enjoys the view of the starry winter sky

Angrod has to comfort his son.

Celebrimbor fainted. Narvi worries about her friend.

The text below is born of a conversation I had with a friend irl, in which she said she'd love to have an epic love story the like of Beren and Luthien (We're both fans of Tolkien so...)
Only the way I read it, the story of Beren and Luthien is not about love, but about pride: It's an epic lesson on the subject of pride and greed.

Elrond and Celebrían sneak out one evening. Set pre-relationship in Lindon.

Finduilas of Dol Amroth is not like Finduilas of Nargothrond at all, is she?
Or so she used to think.

Ficlets for the Jubilee Challenge instadrabbling.

After re-embodiment, Finrod struggles to adjust to Valinor and pick up the threads of his old life

“Elrond!” Elros screamed, and Elrond had time to see him being held back by Bregolon before everything went topsy-turvy, and the underbrush closed around him, branches and leaves slapping at his face. His head bounced against hard metal, and through the confusion he realized—too slowly—that it had not been one of their party who had grabbed him, but one of the orcs.

But at the very end of the letter she spoke of one more prisoner that Elladan and Elrohir had discovered in one of the deepest dungeons of Dol Guldur, locked away behind a door unopened in so long that the hinges had rusted.
Maglor has been rescued from Dol Guldur, and now faces a long road of healing.