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.
Thank you very much for writing and sharing this! I think this is an interesting and moving part of Turin's story, too, and it is very good to see somebody give Sador Labadal a voice!
Oh thank you! I still have one or two more drabbles left! You are my very first SWG reviewer!
When I read the Silm, I didn't think much of Turin; he seemed like such a jerk. But then when I read UT and CoH, and saw what a sweet person he was as a child, it changed my whole way of looking at his tragedy-- that the truly sad part of the story wasn't all the death and destruction, but that he lost that generous innocence of his so very young!
And I was intrigued by Sador Labadal, who was so very good and kind to a young child, giving of his time and his wisdom.
In his piping voice I hear, not scorn, but admiration, and perhaps some pity for my pain.
Labadal is not so ill a name as some might think.
In an economy of carefully chosen words, you've given Sador his voice, and the above nicely addresses why he holds his nickname as compliment rather than scorn.
Oh thank you! Of course with drabbles an economy of words is essential. And I think he understands that this little child truly does love him, and so no offense can be taken.
His father's grief has turned to vengeance, his mother's has turned to ice. Why is it left to me, the lowliest person of the household to wipe his tears?
Excellent wordcraft here, Dreamflower. This conveys so much, explains so much.
Yes, we see in the young child so much love and kindness and generosity! We see a child with so much potential, and it seems that Labadal is the only one who seems to want to nurture that potential. And he is such a patient and loving man. He would have been a good father to children of his own.
his child's heart will break, and of the shards will grow a heart of stone and pride. He is his mother's son.
And thus you give the reader the foundation of what will become Túrin's great tragedy. His story is perhaps the bleakest in The Silmarillion, so this series of drabbles set the foundation for what is to come. Labadal's voice -- world-weary yet full of patience and affection -- is very effective. It's fascinating for this reader to see young Túrin in his days of childhood innocence through the old, loyal servant's eyes. You've given Labadal a nobility and fortitude I have long wanted to see, for surely, the old loyal servant possessed these traits.
This series is an excellent foray into the First Age, Dreamflower! Here's hoping you'll dip your toes into the waters again, perhaps by expanding on one or all of these gems.
When I read of Turin's story in the Silm, I didn't like him much. He seemed so full of hubris and lacking in sense. The tragedy of his story did not move me that much. But then in UT and in CoH, I read the accounts of his childhood and his relationship with Labadal, and that changed my whole view of him. It gave me a chance to realize that he'd had potential, that he had been a child with a lot of love to give, and that all of that had been just crushed out of him. It truly made me empathize with him more. He was an innocent child, with a generous heart, and then he became this bleak and bitter man.
And I was also very drawn to Labadal. As you said, a man of nobility and fortitude, and a wise one as well. I really appreciated the devotion he showed to this lonely grieving child.
I am glad you liked these. I do not know if I have any more First Age fic in me-- I am very devoted to hobbits. But I never thought I'd write this much, so who knows in the future.
Thank you so much for the lovely reviews. ((hugs))
Thank you! I've always been fascinated by that childhood realationship of Turin's ever since I read of it, and I always wondered why his parents did not seem ot care more about the child's feelings.
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.