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.
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Bollywood
Prompts this month are films, songs, and tropes from India's dazzling film industry, Bollywood. Read more ...
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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.
It's intriguing. I like the concept very much. I like the idea also of writers feeling free to invent whatever suits them for the origin and provenance of that particular stone.
This was actually your alternative birthday fic, so to speak. I wrote both pieces, then decided that perhaps you would prefer "Hazelnuts".
I think maybe there needs to be a prologue of some kind before Maedhros launches into all this explanation? The obvious thing would have been to write about Feanor more directly, I guess, but somehow I always feel uneasy about writing Feanor "close-up".
I made a point of getting Celebrimbor involved already in this chapter because of course he takes over later in the story.
Although Fingon has no hesitations about putting in a bit of spadework himself, in my view his real talent shows in getting those gardeners together and making them collaborate and come up with solutions!
Nice chapter! I'm intrigued by this stone notion and I like the fact that Feanor was planning to heal the rift his brothers. Too many stories portray Feanor as a constant bastard but your version of him is quite refreshing. Good job!
The friendship is sort of canonical, but in that version of the canon Celebrimbor is not a Feanorian. The account of the friendship nevertheless seems a bit fraught (hints of possible professional rivalry)--so I have picked up that quality of fraughtness and adapted it to the Feanorian version of Celebrimbor.
Poor Tyelpo! I like to think his friendship with Narvi was plain sailing...
The opening reminded me of a graphic novel: I could see it.
Fingon never expected to worry about vegetables, did he? I like that. It shows that he cared for the smallest details, though feeding your people is no small thing.
Celebrimbor. It's what he doesn't say that is most interesting, and most telling. No pressuring, no grudge-holding, just a sweet smile. Love that.
This is really fascinating! The opening idea, Feanor's idea, is one I very much wish had come into being. That's the bittersweet in this story, and Maedhros. Always Maedhros.
Lovely, lovely! I hope you write more. I'd very much like to see this all the way through to Aragorn...or beyond? Yes, I love to think of happy endings, or at least as happy as can be.
I was sort of trying to alternate conversation-heavy bits with bits that have more description in them. I'm glad the description in the prologue works!
I have written another story in which young Fingon plans the perfect kingdom in great detail--and because he's got no real idea of Middle-earth conditions and, of course, events overtake them anyway, he finds he got almost everything wrong. He adapts, however, as you see!
I'm very glad Celebrimbor came across so well.
I have written some of the following chapters already and parked them elsewhere because bits in between are missing. Next one up is Earendil. I do mean to take this all the way to Aragorn, although I find the idea of writing Aragorn quite intimidating!
Would that our meetings be ever joyful and our partings, while sorrowful, never palled by regret...
...but alas our enemy is great; his iron hand greedily snuffs out our light, and when his hand is withdrawn, the stain of his shadow perpetuates through our words and deeds.
For the moment, my friend, your smile has banished even the small, but virulent, trace of his shadow that I so unwittingly and callously wove into our final goodbye. In this reprieve, I will fasten a light that will endure, even through the inevitable onslaught of his darkness. For this light, though seemingly small, will beget the lights that spell the ultimate end of darkness, even after it consumes us both.
You are wishing that Enerdhil would write this in a letter to Celebrimbor?
It is lovely and I'm glad that this story moved you enough to write it!
I think Enerdhil, at this point, is still not really aware enough of his own importance to write something quite like that, but maybe later on, when he has had time to reflect...
I remember reading the first three parts of this on your Livejournal, but I think I missed the fourth somehow or other. I really like the exchange between Enerdhil and Celebrimbor here...the best teachers always learn still more while teaching, don't they, and the best pupils are often those who unwittingly aide in that process. Also the elessar as a metaphor for Gondolin is very fitting here.
Thank you very much, Huin! I'm glad this piece worked for you. I imagine these two both as highly talented people who developed a real synergy in their work, but Enerdhil has a bit of a chip on his shoulder, as you may have noticed, and so didn't realize how great his own contribution was.
I think I may not have posted the Enerdhil chapter on LiveJournal, actually. This whole thing is a bit of a mess because it's written so out of chronological order. If I ever manage to write the Earendil section, I can get it back into sequence.
I love this- thought I had read everything of yours and then find this. It is a perfect explanation and ties up all the loose ends very nicely. As always your rendering of Maedhros is perfect and the thought and reasoning so very plausible. I like the link with Celebrimbor.
There are stories in which Celebrimbor ends up in Gondolin, even although he is a Feanorian, and they are good stories, but it wasn't going to work in my 'verse, so I had to handle things differently!
Ah- my favourite so far. All tht he says is true but it's her face I see so clearly when she turns around- Cate Blanchett I'm afraid -but it is so clear! I like the practicality of Celebrimbor's reasoning- and really enjoyed the hnotion of Galadriel experimenting with leadership styles and the people being unused to unquestioning obedience. But there is always a sense of something more with Celebrimbor - this is great.
This actually made me cry oddly- because he is so angry for her! And unrelenting in his determintion that she WILL be able to walk strongly. I htink you get under the skin of Celebrian as few do- her gult and sense of worthlessness, but faced by the one who does understand, he just literally sweeps her off - not her feet but carries her almost- just takes on her pain and you just KNOW she will be whole again.
You do get that nicely embarrassed, humble side of Aragorn ever so well- he is a great king but still the Man, and still a bit anxious perhaps about his birthright. But it;s his love for Arwen that secrues him. Gandalf is perfect- impatient and a bit grumpy in a twinkly sort of way and Pippin can't quite keep quiet but sort of wants ot do things right. Lovely bit of the fellowship.
Yes, I find those willow whistles entirely devastating, too, that's why I put one in!
But the job the green stone is doing is to link it up with this bit in Chapter 8:
...when you look up at night towards the evening star, you may think that your ancestor carries the twin—or rather elder sibling—of your own stone, as he sails up above—it wards his heart against the cold splendour of the skies with memories of Middle-earth and reminds him of the reason he undertook his lonely task...
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.