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
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 ...
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.
Every line screamed ‘Galadriel’. I like how different the first two are from the last one. She was restless and very proud and it’s clear how she matured as she found her place in Middle Earth (though the pride is still there).
Thank you--I'm very glad that you think I got her right!
Yes, a great many things have happened between the first two and the last one, and they've all had their effect on her. She is not the kind of person who would ever lose her pride entirely, I think, but it has become leavened with more complex emotions.
"... it is almost possible to believe that you were not really party to the Flight of the Noldor, that you were just going on a trip of exploration and accidentally got mixed up with us at Alqualonde."
All with her cousin, Teleporno, of course. :D
But that aside, I love this. Galadriel is always strong, of course, but it is good to see her vulnerable too, and maturing too.
Do you know you are the first person who commented on this story to take notice of that sneaky allusion to the alternate version in HoME? I suppose it is perhaps not entirely polite to the Professor, but I enjoyed working it in in a way that made sense to me.
My Celeborn, of course, is proud to be a Sinda and is neither Tele- nor -porno!
I'm very glad you think it works as a character study of Galadriel!
I love your characterisation of Galadriel in these little pieces. Her musings on the beaches of Losgar are a little heart-breaking - I love that she considers sending a message "home", so to say, and then realises how futile that would be. Her conversation with Finrod actually made me laugh out loud. Finrod's observation is so spot-on! "Does not apply" - keep telling yourself that, Professor. XD And finally, I loved the idea that Galadriel wasn't so much subject to "fading" after Nenya lost her power, but simply suffered from the same effect as Frodo. Finally-finally, your reconstruction of how the phial was made was also fascinating - and beautifully written, like all of these. This was excellent!
Glad you enjoyed my attempts to make sense of Galadriel and her arc!
Yes, I couldn't resist the attempt to poke a little fun, gently, at the Professor and his Galadriel AU.
As for the fading, I'm not denying it as such, since it's clearly a thing, but it seemed to me that it might have been a bit more and other than that, in Galadriel's case.
Wow. I simply loved this. Galadriel is a character we don't see much in Silmfic (for whatever reason!), and you've managed to capture so much of her character, so keenly and poignantly and in so few words, across the span of her history. You show both her pride and her vulnerability--Galadriel the little sister/cousin whom others feel they must still protect--and also her strength and the kind of no-nonsense wisdom that likely led her to survive when others did not. (I loved how she washed her hands of worry about her father under the observation--the very true observation!--that she could do nothing for him. That felt very true to her character.)
The line about feeling Endore being ripped out of her by the roots really struck me for whatever reason. Something, maybe, about an attachment that she felt toward the land and its people, shown in her help toward the Fellowship (evidenced in the final, stunning double-drabble) when others would abandon them.
I'm very glad you think I've managed to capture some of Galadriel's character here!
I don't know about issues others might have, of course, but I do find her quite difficult because there is such an unusual amount of source material, but it is so disparate and sometimes contradictory and has worrying gaps. As I'm not even trying to write a Galadriel novel, I don't feel the need to solve everything, but I was trying to get a feel for her.
I know others have questioned Galadriel's attitude to Endore and Lothlorien (especially from a post-colonial or anti-Noldorin angle), but I rather see her as gradually engaging more and more fully and more deeply, over the Ages--and I feel that this makes her both stronger against Sauron and in support of the Fellowship and, in the end, more vulnerable.
It's really good to hear that the final drabble works for you here as it does! It was written much later, for a different challenge, and I only decided to add it to the earlier pieces after I had written it.
<i>He makes her impatient sometimes, does Findekano. She knows it is partly jealousy. He has so clearly arrived where he was going, in Hithlum, in Beleriand. She has not. She has quite a long way still to go.</i>
I like your depiction of a younger Galadriel who does not quite understand the implications of her new reality. You can see here that Finrod is the eldest. Well done!
Thank you very much for your comments on the chapters of this fic!
Galadriel has perhaps not lost quite as much as she thinks, at that moment. But Middle-earth and especially Lothlorien had very much become part of her, so it does feel as if she is losing that part of herself.
Of course, if readers read LOTR first and the Silmarillion later, as they still mostly do, they usually only work out afterwards the extent to which the Star Glass condenses all that!
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.