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…
My newly drawn map of Aman, as complete as I could make it.
Current Challenge
Bollywood
Prompts this month are films, songs, and tropes from India's dazzling film industry, Bollywood. Read more ...
Random Challenge
Holiday Party
No matter if you're in the Northern or Southern hemisphere, it's a time of year to think about holidays. Whether you're bundling up in blankets or slipping a swimsuit into your suitcase, we invite you to an SWG holiday party! 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.
Oh wow, this was intense. And remember when the suggestion for this theme first came up along with the note that stories written for this meme tend to be light-hearted? You've certainly produced more proof that in Silmarillion fanfiction, even the most light-hearted meme can turn deadly serious.
Your writing is wonderfully evocative, as usual, effortlessly bringing the characters (with the possible exception of Míriel >_>) to life. The part on Finwë was especially poignant. Poor Finwë. *would huggle him if she dared*
Thank you, Lyra! I can only rarely manage "light-hearted," so just about any challenge is going to get something super-serious and most likely dark from me! :D
Finwe's section was my favorite as well. Most of the comments show that it was the most effective for readers as well, which is interesting.
Oh wow, I just re-read it again and I still have goosebumps. The juxtaposition between birth and death, the reactions to both and the way you portrayed this, it is so well done. Indis reaction, her curiosity mixed with her foresight of what she knew, still hoping that one day Finwë will be happy again yet also wishing that it did not happen. And ah Fëanor... But the last one, the moment that Míriel's moment came, that.. I can't come up with the proper words, but I found it beautifully done with so much respect for those who have moved on when it was their time...
Thank you, Rhapsy! Goosebumps are good! I'm a sadistic author who loves scaring readers, making them cry, et cetera. >;^D
I've found myself recently interested in Indis and what she must have thought and felt when Miriel died. It must have been a complicated emotion: at once hopeful, because she had a chance to marry the one she loved, and yet that must have also provoked guilt. I couldn't resist exploring that here, even though it was a bit of a stretch to move outside of earshot of the bells and when I also felt like I should have had another vignette from the PoV of an OC. Alas, the author's whim prevailed. ;)
Well, been postponing reviewing this one all day. It's terrific. How can I explain the ways? The bells. I am a serious bell person myself. Love staying places with bells--thinking of several towns in Spain. Also Mexico is big for bells--mourning, warning and celebratory bells.
It is a dark story. I was thinking of it visually. Be a great little film. "Who says it's all sunshine and flowers in Valinor?" We know it wasn't. My visual image about filming it would be to use distinct lighting inside and out to reflect your beginning lines of each segment. The inside scenes with a rather medieval northern European light and the outside ones--golden light and very Mediterranean. Or something like that. My point is you caught me up in the ambience.
Of course, I am working on a Feanor story at the moment and that always puts me inside of a character's head, so that little segment hit me the hardest (well, his section and Finwe's).* I'm a hard nut to crack on behalf of Indis. Have more sympathy with her much, much later in the whole saga.
*Don't know if it was your intent, but Feanor comes across to me as a rather deliciously creepy little creature in this one--too precocious by half--not his fault, of course.
Thank you, Oshun! I am a fan of bells myself. Sometimes, when the wind is right, we can hear the 5 o'clock bells from the town up here on the hilltop. *bliss* :)
I'm glad you picked up on the ambiance! I always have very strong visuals in my mind when I write, usually connected to a similarly strong emotion that I want to convey. The challenge, then, is to communicate the visuals/sensations and somehow have the emotions come along with them.
Finwe's section was my favorite. Feanor's was probably the most fun to write, kind of like writing my Caranthir where I can allow myself to write some really weird perceptions. I definitely did want a bit of creepiness to come across; what I have of the AMC prequel, Feanor is definitely a bit odd in his youth, which probably isn't itself strange, considering what he'd endured even by a very young age and his powers of perception coupled with an inability to fully understand what he was perceiving. Indis is really beginning to interest me, mostly because of the complexity of emotions that she must have had when Miriel died. Of course, as soon as there is a hint of complex psychology, I am begging to dive in. ;)
This was beautifully heartbreaking, Dawn. Just gorgeous. Finwe's pain was just so real, and Feanor - and Miriel, poor thing. Just fantastic. I'm hunting for my second tissue now.
Thank you, Steel! Finwe's section was my personal favorite; it felt very raw to write it, and I'm glad that came across. (Meany author that I am who likes to make readers cry. ;)
Thank you, Vanessa! I'm glad that feeling came through in the story. As I wrote in another reply, I usually have very strong visuals in my mind when writing that, for me, convey strong emotion, but the challenge is communicating both to a reader.
Amazing as usual, Dawn. The repetition of the first line was really powerful throughout, and I like the idea of the bell- I think I've always been enamored of bells. That might be why the juxtaposition of the bells tolling for mourning gets me- I think of bells as light and happy things, but here it's something entirely different.
Thanks for taking the time share =) I expect that can be difficult to do when you're organizing the birthday event.
Thank you, Michiru! You are so right! Finding time to write when organizing an event is a challenge. At the same time, though, it does force me to focus on my writing (it's so easy, in the chaos that is my life, to let other things take precedence, but having a challenge and a deadline sort of nudges writing to the fore in terms of priorities.)
I love bells also, and I also had in my mind the ambiguity of the sound of bells, which I tried to hint at too in the story, how something that had, to this point, been perceived as a sound of joy suddenly took on a new meaning. I suppose if one is being analytical (me?? never! :D), then that could extend to the atmosphere in Valinor in general, where Miriel's death really removed a lot of illusions of paradise that many of the Elves seem content to have maintained.
This was very poignant. I loved how their different reactions revealed so much about their personalities, despite it being short. Also have you ever heard of Rachmaninoff's Bells? There's a series of compositions, The Mournful Iron Bells, The Silver Sleigh Bells, the Mellow Wedding Bells, the loud Alarum Bells - etc. Somehow that reminded me of this piece.
Thank you, Aerlinn--I'm glad you enjoyed the piece! Rachmaninoff's Bells is new to me, but I am familiar with the Poe poem "The Bells" on which the music composition is based. I think "Five Bells" might be five slightly different movements of the "Mournful Iron Bells" section. ;) Thank you again for reading and commenting!
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.