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.
There's more coming up--I haven't quite kept up with archiving, so there have been things written and posted to my blog on LiveJournal that I haven't managed to post here yet (not just the rest of this story, but a couple of shorter ones as well).
I'd somehow missed reading this on your LJ, but it's a treat to read here just as much. I've stayed up way past the time I'd intended because it captivated my attention so far that I forgot about the time, and don't think I'll go to bed before reading to the end of this.
I love all the minuscule details and psychological complexities that you've put into connection with the grander scale - diplomatic Maedhros, caustic Fëanor, Fingolfin's staid nature, Fingon's restlessness, the need for an heir and the reactions to Turgon and Aredhel's departure, it's (and I mean that in the best possible way!) like a fantastic layer cake of Noldorin psychology. I can't wait to read more! :D
But --- you can't stop there! I'm quite tempted to try and match little Gil in his distressed wailing - incomplete stories will do that - but that's just because I'm enjoying the fic immensely. :D
Ah, and now that I've finally gotten around to reading the remaining chapters --- it's all so excellent, I'm afraid I can't even offer much intelligent commentary - but I enjoyed the fic immensely, the idea of the origin story that allows for Gil-galad being a (part-)Fingolfinian by blood (something that I hadn't realized how much I really cared for until I read your explanation) without being Fingon's son biologically... and then there is that last chapter, which is gut-wrenching in all the best possible ways.
Thank you very much! I'm glad you enjoyed the rest of the story!
I have to confess that this version of Gil-galad's parentage is rather a case of having one's cake and eating it! But it also embodies something I have felt about Gil-galad, that in some ways he is very Fingolfinian but at the same time, somehow, an outsider among the Finweans. Of course, that could just be due to his later biography, but I have preferred here to imagine it was an element that was there from the start.
It is a rather improbable plot as such, of course, but I worked quite hard to make it psychologically plausible, so I'm very pleased that that seems to have worked!
I wonder if I commented on this on your LJ. I remember it quite well. I would wish that I had thought of this idea myself, but then I would not have been able to write an OFC of whom I have grown quite fond. Also, no Maedhros and Fingon threesomes either. OK. I'm very happy he is not Orodreth's son (does that guy even really exist he feels like he got dropped into the story half-formed?). Recently Keiliss wrote something about Orodreth that made him feel like more of real character than he had before.
All that aside. It's a clever idea. It is such a fun and lovely story. I just wish it were longer and a lot more fleshed out. I am horribly greedy that way! My favorite segment is the last actually. Ah, Maedhros! Ah, Himring--you are breaking my heart with that last line!
Thank you very much, Oshun! You did comment on LJ. I'm happy you liked the story enough to read it again!
By my standards, this story is long and was a major effort! But I got a similar comment from Keiliss, I believe. Of course, you are both of you actually capable of writing novels, something that I can only admire. I think the Maedhros series by now has reached the word count of a short novel, but of course it isn't one.
I'm glad you like little Gil here and enjoyed my attempts at introducing a bit of comedy among all the grimness!
I think Gil-galad would eventually find out--it may not be possible to keep such a secret among Elves for ever--but Fingon would have had no real chance of telling him before he died, so I'm not entirely sure Gil found out while he was still alive in Middle-earth.
I never considered it, but a dog's life would be wrenchingly short to an elf, wouldn't it? I love Gil-Galad's response to the ambassador's assumption. This is a bittersweet and striking vignette.
Even humans find their pets' lives wrenchingly short, although they are themselves brief as a candle flame to elves (or whatever that comparison in the Athrabeth was).
Tolkien has neatly dodged this issue, for the most part, for the horses he names: Shadowfax, Asfaloth, etc.
this chapter was so powerful. Lalwen taking her fate into her own hands. The comment about the heroines of the Ice going back into their cages was brilliant. I love this version of the origin of Gil-Galad!
Lovely chapter. Fingon's realizations about himself and Maedhros are so well done, even though I want to shake them both and just tell them to talk to each other!
I remember that I had planned on reading this story a long time ago, but then my last computer crashed, I lost my bookmarks, and I spent the last two years not remembering to come back to this website. In the meantime, you've completed the story.
What can I say that hasn't already been said? I really just love reading the stories you write, because you always write so beautifully. There is a visceral, physical feeling that I get while reading your prose that I'd describe as being caressed by a plethora of soft, light silks. I love that, even when you write from a character's perspective, you don't immediately allow that character to completely understand or form an opinion about their deepest thoughts--that you allow for their brains to process until the story or journey is near completion or some key experience or observation suddenly provides a revelation that results organically from the process of navigating thier story.
Also, you never seem to run out of new and interesting ideas or takes on the material. =-)
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.