Cultus Dispatches: "The Rings of Power" Is a Ripple (So Far)
Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data for 2025 shows that "The Rings of Power" TV series has not had the same impact on the fandom as the film trilogies did ... so far.

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.

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.

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.

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

Elros caring for Pengolodh after a terrible trauma.

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.

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

In the last days of Númenor, two very different men meet in Umbar and fall in love.
(Please note that while this work is heavily inspired by Disco Elysium, no knowledge of the game is necessary to read the fic!)

Concerned by his responses to the paraphernalia of healing, Fingon steals Maedhros from his room for an impromptu garden excursion. Maedhros battles with dark thoughts.

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.

In the aftermath of the third kinslaying and the death of Amrod and Amras, Maglor needs to reassure himself that Maedhros is still there with him.

Maedhros is left behind by his family after the Kinslaying at Alqualondë after falling beneath the waves. Fingon, in a chance return to Alqualondë, finds an unconscious Maedhros and brings him to camp. The two will discover anew what their love means for them after the lies that split them apart.

Celebrimbor reunites with his family in the Halls of Mandos, hoping to reconcile with them.

Two Dwarves mourn the loss of their lord after the Ninraeth Arnoediad.

The thing about forgiveness, he thought, was that it was so much easier when the object of it was far away—or dead. It was so much easier to let it all go when those responsible were far away and unable to do any more harm.

These were simply flashes, a hint of a wider, greater world. A tantalizing glimpse of more, always at the edge of awareness, never within reach. Míriel would grasp it, if something as intangible as the concept of color could overflow in bounteous wonder over her hands.
But then fire was caught, tamed and kept and cherished, and their world was suddenly awash with light. The world expanded, a pageantry of blues and greens and browns. A cacophony of color, overwhelming in its saturation.
In which Míriel falls in love with the colors in the earliest days, and Indis too.

In his old age, Isildur's former esquire Ruinamacil, known to later histories only as Ohtar, writes his own account of his escape from the ambush at Gladden Fields and journey to Imladris, and the history of his friend whom Isildur ordered to flee with him.

A thrall lately escaped from Angband is turned away from Ladros and finds an unexpected welcome elsewhere.

Trapped upon the bitter cliff, Maedhros dreams. Or hallucinates. Or endures the mental torments of the Dark Vala, Morgoth. Surely, one of those must be the case; for he cannot have been rescued from Thangorodrim's torturous peak. He cannot.
But then, why is Findekáno here?
Maedhros finds in many ways that those visions which do not end with his own blood and breaking are the worst of all: because they end instead in waking, and the inescapable knowledge that such things will never again be aught but dreams to him. That knowledge is a tighter shackle than the one that holds him to the cliff-face, and the pain of it around his heart is much sharper than that which throbs through his arm. An arm goes numb much faster than a heart, and there is a limit to how much pain a body can bear before the sensation of agony starts to crumble beneath the onslaught.
If there is a limit to how much pain a heart can hold, Maedhros has not yet found it.

Finrod is called to Mandos to speak with the spirit of a kinsman who is pardoned, yet refuses to rejoin the living.

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.

Fëanáro dies, and the rest live, coated in his ashes.

Elwing reckons with the passage of time.

It was only the second time Finwë had come out foraging with them, and of course this would happen—of course the Hunter would come, the Dark Rider on his steed with its terrible, heavy footfalls, and the deep-throated laughter that held no mirth, only malice.
In the dark woods near the Waters of Awakening, Finwë's brothers are taken.
In Valinor, when the Trees wither, Finwë is slain.
In the Fourth Age, things take place long thought impossible.

Dopo la Nirnaeth Arnoediad, Maedhros rimane solo a Himring, circondato dal silenzio e dai ricordi.<br />
Tra presente e passato, ripercorre ciò che Fingon è stato per lui — e ciò che non potrà più essere.
Ha partecipato all'EAC nel gruppo Hurt/Comfort Italia