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
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 very scary. Reminds me of the White Walkers in George R.R. Martin, which come to think of it, go very, very well with the Helcaraxë. Now you have me thinking of horror genre Silm fics and I do not DO horror. Runs screaming from the room.
Seriously, it might be AU in its factual details, but these guy really feel like your interpretations of Fingon and Maedhros.
Very nice story (OK, nice is not the word I want! but you get my point).
Thank you very much, Oshun, and thank you very much again for your recommendation of the story on LiveJournal!
I'm not very familiar with ASOIAF, so don't have any strong associations with the White Walkers, but the image you posted on LJ looked very convincing--and in fact, it rather resembles Sirielle's painting of the Noldor crossing the Helcaraxe!
(I don't usually do horror myself but Zeen is a lot more intrepid than me!)
I popped over here upon Oshun's recommendation, and a solid recommendation this proved to be. Very subtle horror, this is. Nothing horrid or in your face, but subtle, like ice crystals creeping out over the still waters of a pond or the sleepiness that takes over when one succumbs to the cold. Beautiful prose and evocative images. I have to say that this...
"But by the fire Fingon would not go, and instead, smiling, he took his place near the window, peering through the glass for the view outside. His breath did not fog up the glass."
...showed your cards, but did not detract at all from the fabulously strange feelings of loss and repulsion that this wonderful ficlet evokes.
I really love ghost stories and it takes a lot to creep me out, but this really did. I love Fingon's melancholy and Maedhros feeling the numbing cold. There are a lot of nice touches here but I especially liked:
"For, of course, he had known all along: ever since the temperature in the room had plummeted when Fingon entered until it was colder inside than outside, ever since he had seen frost bloom under Fingon’s boots in midsummer, ever since the mere touch of Fingon’s fingers had been enough to cauterize the bleeding stump of his wrist."
Maedhros sees all the signs but denies it because he doesn't want it to be true.
And then this:
"it is a different sort of place, the Grinding Ice. It has an intelligence, a will of its own. I knew that well enough, even before...”
And I'm especially pleased to see you quoting from both the part that I wrote and the one Zeen wrote, because to me it means that we achieved an organic whole.
I'm still beyond thrilled that my silly little spur-of-the-moment prompt yielded this gem. There was a lot of squee in Zeen's journal back then, I believe, so I'll confine myself here a bit more and say that yes, this was excellent - beyond excellent even - and still as good as the first time around. Squee! :D Thank you both!
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.