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.
Subscribe to the SWG Newsletter
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 very much! I really appreciate your commenting here, too!
It must have been really traumatic. I guess it is one of the reasons why Elemmire's poem about it later became so popular--it helped them deal with that memory.
This was a very charming piece. Estë knows her job! I can imagine her arranging things so that they would look familiar and comforting (if not wholly so) to Celebrian. I also loved Celebrian's observations: That she does not want to have the painful memories removed magically, and that she welcomes the sensation of homesickness. I think that already shows that some healing has taken place: the pain is no longer between Celebrian and her feelings for the place she left behind. And of course, everything is easier with tea!
Thank you very much, Lyra! I'm glad you liked it. Of course everything is easier with tea!
I downplayed this a little in the ficlet itself because of my recipient, who hadn't read the earlier story, as far as I know, but my own thoughts were that some healing indeed had taken place already--Celebrian experiencing Finrod's support and managing to trust him is the first step in Valinor before she is able to engage with Este, even with this unexpectedly familiar and comforting Este. Thus we find that some healing has taken place already and it opens the door to further healing, as it were!
WOW! The idea of the early Eldar not only consciously hearing, but actively analysing and discussion the echoes of the Ainulindale, is already fascinating... but writing it so effectively in so few words is actual genius. You even manage to characterise the Unbegotten through what little they say! And Tata's final question is a real killer. Absolutely love this!
This came to me while I was having a real struggle with my main piece for Silmarillion40. I guess Dawn's previous posts about the Ainulindale were churning somewhere in the back of my mind.
Aww, Gil-galad is such a sweetheart! And Finarfin's initial naivety and later disillusionment are very believable and quite heartbreaking. I like that among his difficult tasks you listed keeping the people on their side talking to each other. That can't have been easy with all those easily ruffled tempers and (sometimes justified) animosities!
Yes, I think it was difficult to keep people talking to each other and it was also one of the things in which Finarfin did not quite succeed! Because of people's tempers and the sometimes justified animosities, because of the cultural divides (more than one), and because of the chaos of war that kept cutting communication and supply lines. (We don't hear of him in that final episode with Maedhros and Maglor and maybe that is because he is worn out and overwhelmed and distracted, by then, although alternatively maybe, of course, his reaction has just dropped out of the narrative.)
I'm glad you found his disillusionment believable! And I wanted someone to appreciate nevertheless how hard he had tried!
It is an odd thing, how Halloween and it's train of horror movies and the like follow so closely in the footsteps of the actual meaning of the holiday, which is and has always been remembrance of the dead. It is fitting that Remembrance/Memorial Day falls around this time, and it is fitting that you write about it now. You said that my work adhered to the prompts and their source, and that might to an extent be true, but this little vignette more closely resembles what I believe to be the true spirit of this time of year, and that took a great deal more skill. Thank you for sharing this.
This feels very honest and raw. Sometimes that happens, that fiction is too close to reality, or history, for comfort... and yet we find continue to find comfort in it. A sad, but lovely and very fitting story at this 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.