Prompt Round-Up!

Don't worry if you missed any of these, late submissions are always welcome! Our AO3 collection remains open even though March is over, and you can also tag us here on tumblr to share your creations with us.

Optional weekly theme - Rivalry, Competition, Victory

March 25 – Experimental Tuesday! Record a podfic | Create art that uses 2+ different media | Try out a new genre

March 26 ‒ Shot | Song | Creation

March 27 – Meta Thursday! Share your meta/headcanons about a culture in Tolkien’s world.

March 28 ‒  Dunk | Hide & Seek | Water

March 29 – Theft | Emotions | Journeys

March 30 – Community Sunday! Tell us about your favourite part of Tolkien | Tell your favourite fan creators what you enjoy about their work | Say thank you to somebody who has made your fandom experience better in the last year

March 31 - Prompts

Triumph | Hunt | Travel

The optional weekly theme is: Rivalry, Competition, Victory

If you want to share your responses to these prompts with us, you can tag us here on tumblr, or put them into our AO3 collection.

March 30 - Prompts

Community Sunday! Tell us about your favourite part of Tolkien | Tell your favourite fan creators what you enjoy about their work | Say thank you to somebody who has made your fandom experience better in the last year

As another Back to Middle-Earth Month comes to a close, take a moment today to say thank you to the people that make fandom special for you. Whatever it is they do, whether they create, comment, chat, collaborate or just are a welcome presence in your community.

@spring-into-arda (366 words; set in the same universe as the last post)

“We need to talk about your strategy.”

It was dark outside the train, but the lights of the dinner car were as bright and warm as ever. They did nothing to hide the way that even though Maglor was as camera perfect as he was always careful to be when the Capitol was near, there was a frantic fire in his eyes.

Which was why Elrond had to fight the urge to flinch back into his seat when he said, “I’m not going to kill anyone.” 

(He managed it, though. Managed to fold his hands together like he was one of the adults who came and pretended not to argue with Maglor sometimes, calm and firm and together, and definitely not at all pressing his fingers together so tightly to keep them from shaking too much.)

“You are welcome to say that in your interview as much as you like,” Maglor said. “Some of the other tributes might actually believe you. You cannot afford for the Capitol to do so.”

He opened his mouth to protest this.

“Assuming,” Maglor said, “that there is anyone back in the District that you will care about them punishing.”

The answer to this was so obvious that it went without saying.

It did not help the shaking in his hands.

Maglor must have noticed because his next words were gentler. “We’ve had Victors get through their Games without any kills before. Victors who hid. Victors who focused on surviving their environment. Victors who ran. We have not had Victors who made a statement out of doing so. There’s a reason for that.”

He wanted, very much, to keep being mature about this. He could not quite help the slight shakiness that entered into his voice at his own response. “We haven’t had any Victors who were twelve, either.”

Maglor closed his eyes.

“You have survived so much already,” he said at long last. “You can survive this too. I can help you survive this too. I promise you, I will make sure you can survive this. But it will only work if you let me help you.”

Elrond was still very sure he could not kill anyone.

@spring-into-arda (301 words; a continuation of my earlier AU where Finarfin arrives in Beleriand to find nothing but ruins)

There was someone outside the camp.

Finarfin should mention this to someone, probably, but he couldn’t prove it; there was no movement in the endless fields of high, stinging grass, no rustle in the dead limbs of the trees. No noise. No perceptible hint.

But there was an itch at the back of his mind that insisted someone was here.

Madness, probably. A manifestation of desperate hope after weeks of marching through Beleriand and finding nothing, nothing, nothing. Failing that, surely it was the Enemy, at last showing himself.

Surely.

But the itch at the back of his mind felt . . . not like the hunts he had never particularly enjoyed, but that he had gone on for his children’s sakes. It felt like the games they had played when they were small, and he would walk into his office and know they were there even before he had spotted a tiny foot peeking out from behind his desk.

The madness of hope.

Even if Artanis was still alive, was still free, surely she would approach the hosts her father was leading openly, not creep around the edges of his camp like a thief.

He shot one last look at the dead emptiness of the woods before nodding to the guards and letting himself back into the command tent. 

The flap fell behind him. The itch intensified.

He turned.

A gaunt figure was sitting at his desk. There was barely an ounce of flesh left on the figure waiting, in dead stillness, in the chair; just bruised and bloodied skin stretched across knife sharp bone. 

The only hint of life was in the eyes: dark and haunted with more horror than Arafinwe could even now imagine, but still burning with a hint of dread fire.

@spring-into-arda (100 words)

The last time Feanaro had walked this world, it had still been new, though he hadn’t fully realized it at the time. It had felt old to him, in those last days; it had felt burnt out.

None of them had known then what that really felt like.

The world had grown old in his absence. Truly old. He could see it in the swollen sun, so different from how it had been described to him; he could feel it in the weariness of the wind.

The song was tired.

March 29 - Prompts

Theft | Emotions | Journeys

The optional weekly theme is: Rivalry, Competition, Victory

March 28 - Prompts

Dunk | Hide & Seek | Water

The optional weekly theme is: Rivalry, Competition, Victory