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…
Current Challenge
Bollywood
Prompts this month are films, songs, and tropes from India's dazzling film industry, Bollywood. Read more ...
Random Challenge
Arda Underground
Take the dark back streets of one of Arda's cities, explore an unsigned tavern or hovel, and meet the people too insignificant or unsavory to make it into the history books. 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.
I love it. It is fabulous. I really wish I could draw! I would illustrate it. What fun that would be. Although, actually, it might be funnier to imagine the illustrations that to actually see them.
I adore Finrod and his geekishness anyway. This sounds like him in my head.
Actually, I just remembered that Pandemonium has an illustration in my biography of Finrod here that almost fits one of the possible illustrations: http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/reference/characterofthemonth/finrod.php Scroll down until you get to the cartoon.
This was just fantastic! Your Finrod is both unintentionally hilarious and charming! His awkwardness (and complete obliviousness to said awkwardness) makes it even more endearing. I am imagining all of his sketches. And giggling.
I like to think that Finrod is wise enough to be aware of some of the awkwardness. But then, he is writing this to impress his girlfriend, so he would never admit to it. He is a gentleman explorer, comfortable everywhere!
Recapping from the SV site, but it bears repeating... :^)
Sketches from Beleriand is hilarious, but I would expect no less from you, tehta. Each of Finrod's parenthetical asides on his enclosed sketches (or list) are increasingly hootworthy, and you've captured his scholarly (and patronizing - although a well-intentioned kind of patronizing) voice perfectly. A great andvery entertaining read!
And this...
"Imagine the scene: off in the distance, the mountains rolled towards me, softened by the distance and shaded an impossible indigo. Meanwhile, beside me, every blade of grass, every flower-petal, every leaf on every tree stood out in the still, glowing air, sharp and separate, as if masterfully wrought from a ductile metal. (Not from stone, though: even if I found some in the right blue-green shade, I could never carve it so finely.)
(I confess I am quite pleased with the descriptive powers displayed above, but in case they have failed me, I am enclosing a few watercolours. I believe the third is the best.)"
AH HAHAHAHA! That was the first bit that sent me well and truly over the edge.
And you're right: Finrod's sketch would have been FAR more anatomically correct than my badly drawn cartoon. :^D
This is so wonderful! I love eager, slightly clueless Finrod and his inquisitiveness. I like to imagine his letters somehow survived the fall of Nargothrond and found their way to Amarie eventually… I can see her much later showing the sketches around at family gatherings like other people do with baby photographs, a blushing Finrod in the corner trying to ignore them all ;-)
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.