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 ...
Random Challenge
Arda Underground
Take the dark back streets of one of Arda's cities, explore an unsigned tavern or hovel, and meet the people too insignificant or unsavory to make it into the history books. 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.
Long, long overdue here, and I apologize for that, but wanted to say how much I enjoyed this! It goes without saying that I thoroughly embrace the notion of Sauron as scientist-engineer, and you've done a great job with that! Very much appreciate your vision of the Dark Lord and his keen intelligence.
Thanks very much! Your review really meant a lot to me! (Apologies for taking so long to reply, I haven't been on the site in a while.)
I'm here re-posting 'Forging of the Ring' after submitting it to my writers' group. (That's an experience in humility, but I get lots of good editing out of it.) The main change was that I had the Ring get heavier when he transfered his power into it.
Thanks very much! Your review really meant a lot to me! (Apologies for taking so long to reply, I haven't been on the site in a while.)
I'm here re-posting 'Forging of the Ring' after submitting it to my writers' group. (That's an experience in humility, but I get lots of good editing out of it.) The main change was that I had the Ring get heavier when he transfered his power into it.
This is great, and true to the process of invention, particularly when it's a very powerful invention, and that if it had not been for that safety margin...I know I'm a broken receord when it comes to the comparisons to the Manhattan Project, but I can't help but be reminded of Enrico Fermi's concern that the atomic blast woud ignite the hydrogen in the atmosphere, and that would be that.
Needless to say, I very much enjoy your portrait of Mairon as inventor/engineer and not a mere one-note bwahaha villain. :^)
Fascinating insights into both the process, combining engineering and sorcery and smithing, of the creation of the One Ring and the even more complex working of Sauron's mind.
It's at sauronsblog dot com. I googled on "Sauron's Blog" and it was the first thing the first thing that popped up. Silly, not quite cannon, and not very nice to Aule, but lots of fun.
I didn't quite get whether the Ring would continue to burn Sauron's finger and he would have to continue using the salve (and I love the Chief Assistant, btw, and hope that Sauron gave him a promotion), or it was a one-time effect.
Love it that Sauron still wanted, however impossible, his old master's approval, not Melkor's, but Aule's approval. This Sauron is definitely still Mairon the Maia, though fallen.
Thanks for your notes! He was afraid the Ring was burning him, that the Ring was like a Silmaril, but that was a misconception on his part. The pain was from the burn caused by the bursting lava bubble that sprayed and landed on his hand. The salve suppressed the pain and he forgot he'd been burned, until the salve wore off. ("Novacaine doesn't kill pain, it postpones it." - Bill Cosby)
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.