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.
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.
[Writing] No Time Have I by Flora-lass
A Silmarillion acrostic.
[Writing] I called it Fate that I should fail by AdmirableMonster
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…
[Writing] All of you by chrissystriped
Elrond and Celebrían celebrate their anniversary with their family.
[Writing] Lament for the Singer by daughterofshadows
A short thing about Maglor, death and grieving.
[Writing] Cosmological Poems of Arda by AaronAzrael
I would like to share my revelations of Tolkien's Universe in the form of narrative and emotional poems.
[Writing] Eä's Redemption by AaronAzrael
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…
[Artwork] Map of Valinor by Aprilertuile
My newly drawn map of Aman, as complete as I could make it.
Bollywood
Prompts this month are films, songs, and tropes from India's dazzling film industry, Bollywood. Read more ...
Turgon's Rock Opera
On the anniversary of the publication of "The Silmarillion," we’re reflecting on the importance of music in Arda with prompts that come from rock songs. Read more ...
Fandom Chocolate … or Authors Love Comments by Dawn Walls-Thumma
[]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.
Passing Ships by Simon J. Cook
[]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.
Fanfiction and the Serious Business of Writer's Craft by Dawn Walls-Thumma
[]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.
[Writing] Staging a Battle by StarSpray
[]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.
[Writing] From whose bourn no traveller returns by losselen
[]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.
[Writing] Sand Sorcery by StarSpray
[]It is well known that Psamathos does not leave his cove. He does not like to get his feet wet, and prefers to spend his days dozing under the sun.
Fellowship of the Fics: Summer Stories 2024
Fellowship of the Fics offers four weeks of summer-themed prompts during the month of July.
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.
July 2024 Call for Papers and Proposals
Conferences and publications that have open calls for papers and proposals in July 2024.
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.
Repeating my not very eloquent words from the Slashy Santa site here, because I want to encourage people who may not read there to read it here.
This is a wonderful story. I loved it beginning to end. You did so much with it. I love Maedhros and I adore cheeky, brave Oropher. I am stuttering for things to say about it. I loved every single chapter. You kept me riveted. I had no idea what would happen next, despite the fact your stick very close to canon in its broader outlines. This is not AU everything happens between the lines of the presumed history.
I love young Oropher's admissions of his feelings to himself and his running commentary about Maedhros. I love the description in the the love scenes.
You should be very pleased with what you have accomplished in this story. I definitely will read it again. Forgot to say before that it has a lovely ending.
Thank you again! I grew fond of cheeky, brave Oropher too, and I hope his characterization here makes the later portion of his story more explicable. I really appreciate that this story made me actually write about him -- which I would have otherwise not done! I was nervous about the love scenes, the request wanted up to NC-17, but I think I probably skirted that rating. Ah, well. Thank you! I like the ending the best. :)
I've already told you I like it and think you've done extremely well with a difficult set of prompts! There are so many good things in this. Your Oropher is very likable and engages the sympathy of the reader. (I did feel so sorry for him, in that scene alone in the forest!) Your Carcharoth is unusual and scary. Oropher's first meeting with Maedhros is a really striking scene and all their dialogues are well handled, with plenty of effective twists and turns.
And I love the epilogue from Maedhros's POV!
It wouldn't have been possible without you! You get all the credit, Himring, thank you so much! I feel like there was, ultimately, probably not enough of the talking wolf in it, but Carcharoth was fun to write about. (Of course, now I want something from his POV. It couldn't have been easy to be raised at the throne of Morgoth, knowing that your destiny lay in killing The Greatest Dog Ever. Think of the pressure!)
Thank you for making me see that Maedhros could be tragically funny -- I think it was your story, "Of Cabbages and the Embarrassment of Being Maedhros" that made me realize it. And somehow his character-arc felt even sadder that Maedhros was capable of humor, and I took it and ran with it. I hope it worked? (Even without naked Fingon fantasies.) It's a little homage to your story, when Maedhros briefly considers raising cabbages in the epilogue. :D
I don't like Oropher. For a lot of reasons, involving Dagorlad and the idiocy there, as well as a general preference for Fëanorians over Doriathrim.
Usually, anyway.
You did an amazing job here, Zeen - Oshun and Himring already pointed out how likeable Oropher was in your fic, and how it worked extremely well in context. The encounter with Carcharoth was quite fun to read because scary and surreal as should be, and I loved the description of Maedhros after Angband.
Good solution with Oropher's wife as well - I liked that touch! And Síriel is someone my Idhlinn would quite like to meet, although I have a feeling they might be a little too alike to get along. ;)
All in all, an excellent read!
Thank you, Elleth! I'm so glad you liked. I've never seriously thought of Oropher before -- except to think that he was suicidially stubborn, which, actually, makes him just Maedhros' type!
Carcharoth was a surreal creature, even by Middle-earthly standards, I had fun with him. If only I was better at coming up with werewolf dialogue!
I tried to be respectful of Oropher's wife -- I hate it when canonical wives/love interests are villified or outright ignored to make way for the delicious slaaaash. (I mean, I love the delicious slash, obviously, but it never seemed to be fair to me. Ladies get a raw deal from the narrative anyway, I don't want to add to it.) Personally, I think Oropher and his wife never really connected -- but that was because of *his* lingering guilt and trauma, not through any fault of hers. (It also, in this story, poisoned his relationship with his son, Thranduil isn't taking a grey ship any time soon to see dear old dad.)
I wanted Oropher's wife would be an interesting person in her own right, and if Thranduil was still very young (or underaged) when Oropher was killed in battle, she could have been the dowager queen. Possibly, I overthought this.
I definitely borrowed the notion of a nonsense Feanorian-healer from you, thanks to your B2MEM entries this year. Possibly, Siriel doesn't quite have the spirit of scientific curiosity needed to dissect an dead orc, but there are probably times when she'd be tempted to dissect a live elf or two. Especially ones that think complete bed rest are things that happen to other people...
Thank you again for the review!
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