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
Kings & Kink
Throughout history, wherever there is writing, there is erotica. This challenge pulls its prompts from "vintage" works of romance and erotica. (Nonromantic and nonsexual options are also available.) 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.
(Yeah, that's about how I plan to deal with the details, but even then the depth and breadth of the source material available makes me doubt I can do justice to it with quick searches.)
1. Very well written: the words flow so pleasantly, and tension is very well maintained.
2. The excellent people-handling skills demonstrated by Mairon the ascended middle-manager. (I would never be able to handle an under-performing underling so skillfully.)
3. The very atmospheric setting with its subtle sadness.
Thanks for reading and commenting, Tehta! Re: point 2--I don't know where he comes up with these things, being a figment of my imagination, and me being fairly socially inept and also totally not intimidating. He's actually a great character to have living in one's head though, because actually gives me ideas about how to handle my own life more, um, efficiently.
Mairon is frightening and impressive. Clearly, Aksnuzîr's best course would be to run, although I'm not sure it would be possible to run fast enough. You've got me speculating in what way "watch over the gardens" is going to be a really horrifying job...
The description of the garden and the birds is beautiful, melancholy and very ominous.
Also the way you make the Faithful sound like an obscure minority cult is very clever and, as we've discussed on LJ, I think it is quite possible that many of the citizens of Armenelos really were disposed to think of them like that at that time.
"You've got me speculating in what way "watch over the gardens" is going to be a really horrifying job..."
*hums noncommitally*
Thank you again for your comments, Himring, here and on LJ. After the LJ discussion my doubts as to the plausibility as assauged, although I still do need to crack open UT or some other resource and do a more thorough research job at some point.
Hello, I wanted to offer my congratulations to you for this story, it is extremely well written and, in my opinion, depicts very nicely a side often left unexplored of what converting a whole civilization would have meant for dear old Mairon. I find that his skills in handling the failed priest denote a keen mind capable of "organized evil" that makes him even more dangerous than his master despite appearing less so.
On another note the description of the temple is beautiful in its melancholy.
Your encouragement is quite timely, as I've been meaning to finish and post another chapter for, well, weeks. Between one thing and another going on in life, I haven't managed it yet, but the story is very much alive and well in my mind. Hopefully I'll get another chapter up here soon. I'm pleased you noted the melancholic air of the temple, since that was one thing I was very much aiming to portray.
I love it! I love the writing, and all the characters. The brave realist "heretic", the cowardly gardener who cannot oppose even a rooster, and, of course, Mairon, who with all his power can afford to indulge his curiosity. The pacing is amazing, too: that last passage really offsets the tense conversation of the first scene with a simmering tension of a different, less intelectual and more basic, sort.
Many thanks! I really like your remark about Mairon being able to afford to indulge his curiously, that's quite apt, especially as I would consider his inquisitive nature to be very much intertwined with his drive to power.
In this chapter I liked how you built the character of Kathunâ showing her to be at the same time very brave in her humanity and extremely realistic, I loved her awe at the sight of the Maia's eyes that didn't translated into servility and her rational integrity that marks her as very different from both groups operating on behalf of divinities. Another very well depicted character was Sauron, the way Mairon succeeds in being at the same time almost courteously elegant and, maybe even because of that, deeply menacing is extremely pleasant. It was very fascinating to me seeing how his supernatural nature translated in his treatment of human beings, even ones he has projects for.
As for the second part it is beautifully written, not that the first wasn't, but there I feel that the style becomes a protagonist in itself. Aksnuzîr is clearly clueless about what to expect and I found the contrast between the "cruelty" of nature (hens eating their own eggs thanks to the rooster) and the one of men (Aksnuzîr feeling trapped in what could have been his domain and taking it out on a worm) very well, and subtly, done.
Thank you for your detailed comments, Valentis! I'm finding it interesting to see what people are getting from the story, since some of it is connections I didn't consciously draw while writing it (I.e., your perception of two different types of cruelty in the garden...I'm pleased that readers are pointing these things out, and that such perceptive readers have taken a liking to this story!)
Brilliant stuff here, Huin! Your imagery is vivid, phrasing is lovely, and the themes...well, my atheist's black little heart soars. :^D
I derived a good deal of amusement from Chapter 2's Interlogue. Somehow, I suspect Aksnuzîr's dealing with the chickens might be inspired by authorial first-hand experience. Loved the allusion to one of Manwë's feathered spies overhead.
You're well on your way to an enviably well-written magnum opus here! Very well done.
Thanks so much, Pande! Somehow I am not surprised that certain themes here would appeal to you. One of several strands of inspiration for this story was wanting to address the canon's simplistic picture of "Faithful v. Cult of Melkor". And as for the Ch 2 interlogue...well, 'write what you know' and all that, hahaha.
As others have said: you've added a further twist to the tension and you've maintained the stylistic appeal and contrast of your narrative strands.
And it's good to meet Kathuna, although (being a very sentimental reader!) one could wish she were in a better place.
(I somehow assumed the dark bird was Sauron transformed rather than a messenger of Manwe. Looking again, I see the tonal ambiguity, at least, is intentional--vulture or eagle?)
Thank you for stopping by and commenting, Himring!
Ah, there is still much time for fortunes to alter for all in involved, in some way or other (not that that's much comfort, necessarily).
Re: dark bird. I am pleased that it invites different intertepretations. *rubs hands together* I am suddenly reminded of a lyric from Leonard Cohen's song 'The Story of Isaac': "I thought I saw an eagle, but it might have been a vulture, I never could decide." Hmm. *considers the merits of adding song to story-writing playlist*
I'm sure Mairon finds dealing with Saklinzil to be a good deal less...trying.
I confess I rather quickly came to sympathize with Pharazôn while writing this. He's clever, but simply not clever enough when pitted against mortality/Valinor/Mairon/any of the other things that are in some way set against him. Of course he's also kind of a raging egotist, so there's that.
Thanks very much! It's been some months since this one was updated, but due only to lack of time/energy, as it's still very much alive in my mind. I hope to return to it in June, as I will have more free time.
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.