Founded in 2005, the Silmarillion Writers' Guild exists for discussions of and creative fanworks based on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion and related texts. We are a positive-focused and open-minded space that welcomes fans from all over the world and with all levels of experience with Tolkien's works. Whether you are picking up Tolkien's books for the first time or have been a fan for decades, we welcome you to join us!
New Challenge: Bollywood This month's challenge offers songs, films, and tropes from Bollywood, the world's largest film industry based out of India, as prompts for fanworks.
Cultus Dispatches: Fandom Chocolate … or Authors Love Comments Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data provides insight into how comments benefit authors and which authors are most impacted by a lack of comments, with a digression on authors' perspectives one-click feedback like kudos.
A Sense of History: Passing Ships As Tolkien's characters in various texts gaze out to the sea, what do they see? What is brought by the ships coming out of the West?
Beta-Reader List Now Available The beta-reader list and profiles have been moved into our new system and are available again.
Nimruzimir, a natural philosopher recently out of his apprenticeship, hardly considers himself very important to anyone, least of all his colleagues. When his strange, prophetic fits bring him to the attention of the High Priest, however, he may find that his existence is less superfluous than…
This is my new poetical attempt to add my own interpretation to Tolkien's Cosmology as to Eru's Creation and the Valar's minds and behind-the-scene providence reasons and mechanisms.. I often review Eä as part of our own world, just in another dimension, this is why I have always seriously…
Current Challenge
Bollywood
Prompts this month are films, songs, and tropes from India's dazzling film industry, Bollywood. Read more ...
Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data shows that authors view comments as driving their motivation to create fanfiction. However, perception of comments by authors is part of a larger shift in fandom around how and how often fans interact with each other.
The arrival and departure of ships across the Great Sea carries mythic significance for the peoples of Middle-earth. The image of ships crossing out of and back into a mysterious West appears as well in Beowulf and is alluded to in Tolkien's tower analogy in his lecture "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics," where the tower allows those who climb it to observe the passage of the ships.
Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data shows that while most authors self-identify as taking their craft seriously, a growing subset of authors may be pushing that norm.
He and Diamond were visiting, though Pippin had been disappearing every afternoon, and taking Frodo and Elanor and most other lads and lasses in the neighborhood with him—though why they couldn’t use Pippin’s own pony, Sam couldn’t imagine.
So gathered they were to Bree, what lieutenants who could be spared, from their scattered watches west and east, for their chieftain had returned from his long sojourn in lands godless and mountains strange.
Aragorn returns from the South to tells his tales. Halbarad listens.
Elrond Week 2024
Elrond Week is a fandom event dedicated to Elrond Peredhel that will run from July 10th to July 16th on Tumblr.
July challenge at tolkienshortfanworks posted
The tolkienshortfanworks challenge for July has been posted to the Dreamwidth community. The thematic challenge is: original character or unnamed canon character; the formal challenge: fixed length of multiple of 50 words. New participants welcome.
Teitho June/July Challenge: Mentor
The June/July prompt for the Teitho challenge is "mentor" and invites fanworks about this relationship in Tolkien's works.
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Comments
The Silmarillion Writers' Guild is more than just an archive--we are a community! If you enjoy a fanwork or enjoy a creator's work, please consider letting them know in a comment.
I love this! You really know how to push my buttons. I have always imagined that the Noldolante was not just a tragic tear-jerker, but comprised the entire emotional gamut--the moments of levity as well as those of sorrow.
Thank you! In my more off-beat moments, I imagine that we are, all of us together, trying to write (or re-write) the Noldolante for Maglor, that is, not just when we write about the Noldolante itself, but in anything we write about the Noldor--in which case, the Noldolante indeed contains just about everything and the kitchen sink... On a more literal level, the Noldolante seems to have been a longish work, not just a short lyric, so it was probably not, as you say, merely a tear-jerker, because I suspect Maglor was too great an artist to restrict himself to a single emotional note in a major work like that.
No, I guess he can't--not, at least, when he is practising his art, not without losing his integrity as an artist. As a performer, I think he's still enjoying himself, though, startling Daeron not once, but twice over! I am very grateful that you and Oshun chose to comment on different aspects of this piece, because I was trying to balance both these points of view against each other.
‘I just did’, he said softly. ‘It is all, all Noldolante—because it is I who play it.’
Wonderful, and so true. Daeron's comment on the Noldor shows us they don't know the real Noldor, and how much the Noldor have changed.
the young Noldo sat bolt upright, suddenly stone-cold sober, and began considering what else Maedhros might have meant to imply.
I too am considering. Is it because Morgoth didn't have anough time before Fingon rescued him? Because Maedhros was already broken by his father, or by himself or by what happened? All of the above? None? ... I love how everyone could have their own interpretation :)
Thank you very much! I'm glad these short pieces seem to work for you as a pair. I think that there are some suggestions in my other stories what Maedhros could have been hinting at. But, of course, he mainly wanted the bystanders to understand his answer as they did--although the atmosphere at the Feast of Reuniting was friendly and optimistic, the question he was being asked was actually quite a dangerous one, politically, and he was aware of that.
I guess Maedhros is saying, more or less, that the events before his capture had already driven him mad (or to a state approaching to madness) and that that madness probably made it more difficult for Morgoth to manipulate him, even by torture.
He's exaggerating for effect, though, so he doesn't literally mean Morgoth didn't get a word in or that he was completely unaffected by the torture he underwent. Alasse suggests in her comment that he might also be saying that he would have broken in time but Fingon rescued him before that happened. This is probably also true.
But a similar image recurs, in a story set quite a long time later, when he says he feels that he has Morgoth shouting at him in one ear and Feanor in the other.
I deliberately wanted to leave most of the details of what Maedhros went through during capture to the reader's imagination.
I've written a bit about Maedhros's state of mind in "Diptych", though.
Okay, I feel free to repost one comment I left recently to heget, and , yes, I am fully aware what it means to recall your fathers requests and expectations, even if you decided they were foolish and mentally ill.
It is hard getting out of this chains of behaviour, and it took me great efforts, a lot of professionell help, and about twenty years to free myself.
This would be some nice idea for the never totally grown up * sons of Feanor* , just look at this term!
Some AU story to write...
When looking on the Feanorians, I sometimes cannot keep my mind clear, itseems.
Once, Celegorm was somehow a pupil of Orome, he could talk to animal, had some Maia of him as companion, leads a strong friendship to Aredhel/Irisse, but when I think of his actions in Nargothrond, or, worse, to Luthien, I want to die of shame.
Curufin never had my symphacy, so his down fall would' nt annoy me in any way, he always resembled his father, and was loved and honoured by him above all his other sons, and he aalways shows to much pride and self- love.
Caranthir/Carnistir is dear to my heart, he was the outsider in his family, he made friendship with dwarves ad men, though you can call him maybe stingy or mad of wealth, in my opinion he was only insecure about his own worth and needed some assurance, but only did it on the wrong way. I must suggest, I like all those fanon stories of him and Haleth, it would really fit him.
It is hard, coming to Maedhros and Maglor...
They are intelligent and perceptive enough, to see what they are doing, but, there is the great BUT, they never seem to mature beyond their father's childish behaviour, Feanor really seems to be burnt?? in their minds, only Maglor has a faint idea to defy his father's strict rules, not to steal the Silmarils, and rather endure the Void, than to do more killing, but he was so relied on his brother's affection, he could not do against his will.
And Maedhros sacrified everything he loved to his fathers ideals, to fullfill Feanor' s expections, so, there was nothig left , and so he maybe choosed wilfully his own damnation, knowing there was nothing else ut this for him...
Okay, I somehow * took pity upon* the Feanorians, and, being the one and only child of a similar forgi g and urgi g father, I have a lot of symphacy to give...
Though I went an absolutely different way,and have only pity, no more respect or love for my breeder, I have a special kind of understanding ( and therefore even crooked love) for the Feanorians.
I think the fate of the Feanorians touches on something in our experience for many of us, in some way or other, but for you it clearly resonates especially, in a very personal and very intense way.
I am glad to hear you managed to free yourself and sorry you had to go through all that!
Hi, Himring! Reading this chapter for the fourth or fifth time (but for the first time in quite a while), I finally figured out what Maedhros means here, or at least one meaning that would explain the young Noldo's thoughts later that night. Very, very clever indeed! And poor Maedhros, to have to live (much less lead the Noldor) with that particular curse. Very well done, as always!
Comments
The Silmarillion Writers' Guild is more than just an archive--we are a community! If you enjoy a fanwork or enjoy a creator's work, please consider letting them know in a comment.