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.
Thank you! :D I was hoping to highlight the differences in his and Tyelko's characters here: Tyelko is too impetuous to even lie while Curvo has a whole ruse cooked up with a few seconds of warning!
I have 13 years of practice! :D I don't drabble much anymore, but when I started in fandom, drabbling was the Cool Thing, and I used to instadrabble pretty frequently with my friends.
It's a tough and pretty merciless form! Usually I cave at least once and say, "This one will be a double-drabble!" so I'm proud of myself that I didn't do that at all this time. ^_^
I don't know, in terms of the Felakverse, how I think it happened yet; I'll get there eventually! I wrote this drabble on Thursday, the night after I wrote a different version of Terentaule staying behind in my TRSB story. (These instadrabbles are a way to play with ideas I'd probably never actually consider--part of what's fun about them! :)
You know that after Tolkien, Beowulf is my scholarly turf. :D And since if Middle-earth is our Earth, it made sense to me that some of those Beleriand-based myths might become Northern myths ...
Me too! I totally believe him when he says he would die if they were broken. He's a bit old at that point in the story to be engaging in adolescent dramatics (which is otherwise what it sounds like; "If I can't have them I'll just DIE" *flounce*). I don't know that this is *exactly* how I imagine it going down, but with 100 words to work with, it gets to the point!
This is a scene I've had in mind for well over a decade by now; I even alluded to it somewhere (maybe AMC?) but this is my first time writing it. It was the only addition to the NSFW channel and people wanted more of it ... if I ever get to write the AMC prequel (I will!), it will be in there. :D
Thanks for reading and comment on all of these. <3
I adore that idea. RPF of Tolkien stumbling upon sone hard evidence! Stop throwing these plot bunnies at me! I'm already imagining the lecture he could give about his findings. I will NEVER do this. I think you should.
LOL--maybe someday! You should see my writing to-do list for the summer: two scholarly articles and finishing a novel and the TRSB story. I started one of them ...
I'm sorry I could not make the leap to be able to understand this one. I need things spelled out. It did entertain me. Reminded me of the Dorothy Parker poem by the same name and how it could be suitable for Andreth:
This I say, and this I know: Love has seen the last of me. Love's a trodden lane to woe, Love's a path to misery.
This I know, and knew before, This I tell you, of my years: Hide your heart, and lock your door. Hell's afloat in lovers' tears.
Give your heart, and toss and moan; What a pretty fool you look! I am sage, who sit alone; Here's my wool, and here's my book.
Look! A lad's a-waiting there, Tall he is and bold, and gay. What the devil do I care What I know, and what I say?
Basically it is Andreth lamenting what we mere mortals complain about all the time: that history repeats itself and those in power don't look back to the past for lessons. There is a cycle of hope followed by disappointment and despair. They migrated north in hopes of breaking the pattern and beginning anew, which is ironically more of the same in hoping that the past pattern won't hold true ...
It's a pretty dark and gloomy one ... (Also I know "Anthrabeth" is not your favorite text.)
I like this as an explanation for why there is never mention of Celebrimbor's mother- it seems entirely plausible and there is a rela sense here of HER and her motivation- the dream of glory and the reality.
Your Nerdanel is the only one for me- she is complex, loyal though she refuses Feanor in the end, loving, a mum and mother. She never stops loving them and never stops thinking of them but doesn't regret.
Poor Maedhros- how he disintegrates in grief, and this made me think of AMC (partly because I am re-reading it AGAIN:) and how loving he is, how they all waited for him to be a father because he was born to be just that. The fact that Tolkien has him search tells us that he was not lost, and although it is Maglor who persuades him (apparently) to take Elrond and Elros, all of this suggests he would never haveleft children alone in that place or this. Lovely writing- senseof ghosts without revealing it.
the retching Light that poured in fluid past my lips, dry and cold and bright and burning, leaving me complete, leaving me hollow.
The moment of his changing -where he loses everything else hecared for. You express this perfectly with the contrast between all that he ignores tocomplete the work and never recovers.
This is just lovely- I have never really felt anything for these two, being sucked into the Maedhros story and so HATING them for denying him- but this just is like a picture, so perfectly have you chosen the images and phrases. I wish I could paint this as a fic-gift but it would be an insult:) stick Elu and Melian probably not doing you justice!!
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.