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.
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.
[Writing] No Time Have I by Flora-lass
A Silmarillion acrostic.
[Writing] I called it Fate that I should fail by AdmirableMonster
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…
[Writing] All of you by chrissystriped
Elrond and Celebrían celebrate their anniversary with their family.
[Writing] Lament for the Singer by daughterofshadows
A short thing about Maglor, death and grieving.
[Writing] Cosmological Poems of Arda by AaronAzrael
I would like to share my revelations of Tolkien's Universe in the form of narrative and emotional poems.
[Writing] Eä's Redemption by AaronAzrael
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…
[Artwork] Map of Valinor by Aprilertuile
My newly drawn map of Aman, as complete as I could make it.
Bollywood
Prompts this month are films, songs, and tropes from India's dazzling film industry, Bollywood. Read more ...
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 ...
Fandom Chocolate … or Authors Love Comments by Dawn Walls-Thumma
[]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.
Passing Ships by Simon J. Cook
[]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.
Fanfiction and the Serious Business of Writer's Craft by Dawn Walls-Thumma
[]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.
[Writing] Staging a Battle by StarSpray
[]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.
[Writing] From whose bourn no traveller returns by losselen
[]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.
[Writing] Sand Sorcery by StarSpray
[]It is well known that Psamathos does not leave his cove. He does not like to get his feet wet, and prefers to spend his days dozing under the sun.
Fellowship of the Fics: Summer Stories 2024
Fellowship of the Fics offers four weeks of summer-themed prompts during the month of July.
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.
July 2024 Call for Papers and Proposals
Conferences and publications that have open calls for papers and proposals in July 2024.
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.
Oooh, fascinating. And very sad - both to imagine the Avari ending up in Valinor after all, possibly still quite against their will, and to think that Finwë's father and the rest of the family never get over the rift caused by the Great Journey. Interesting (and moving) that Ingwë is less obstinate! Smart move to use the "decorative" obsidian to make blades, whatever the Valar say. You never know when you need one...
And I absolutely adore the idea that Maglor would have run into that side of the family at some point.
Thank you! I've always felt bad for the Avari (and the Sindar & Nandor) that there doesn't seem to be an option for those who die other than remain in the Halls or be reborn in a land that isn't theirs, with a bunch of elves already there that they don't seem to get along with very well. I do think Finwë's father eventually gets introduced to the rest of his family and they get over it. It just takes a long time.
My Ingwë is always one of my least obstinate characters! Probably because if he wasn't, my only characters in Valinor would be very stubborn Noldor and very stubborn Teleri, and somebody has to break up the fights and not react on pure emotion (plus, his whole family came, so he can take a step back and not immediately think of a fight with his father or brother).
Fëanor had to get his habit of sneakily making blades from somewhere. :P
I'm glad you like the idea of Maglor running into that side of his family! I worried it'd be too out there, which is why this story isn't about that - but I just love the idea of him stumbling across them, figuring out their language, and then slowly putting together the pieces about the son that left them and went to Valinor while they've been hearing stories from the Western shores of cursed elves that came back across the sea. At least he wouldn't be completely without family, even if it is new family...
I like the idea of the Noldor underestimating the "primitive" Elves, and said Elves being badass enough to hold off Morgoth with their unconventional weapons and warfare. Nicely done.
Thank you! I was inspired by the line about how the Avari thought the Noldor were arrogant, and it seems to me that it probably went both ways in terms of judging each other, along with a love of anthropology and how no different culture is as stupid as the dominant culture thinks they are.
Brooke, this is wonderful! So much going on in relatively few words, and I love the parenthetical asides and what they show of what is going on in your OC's mind.
This story raises so many good questions. What of the Avari who died? What was done (or not) to accommodate them in Valinor? And having forsaken the Great Journey, what did they think of awaking in a land they made a choice not to inhabit?
Of course, the historical bias researcher in me loves that you are showing the perspective of one of the groups conveniently ignored (or actively maligned) by the Silm and the HoMe materials. I've always had a soft spot for the Avari, feeling like they were mistreated in the texts writing about them (never BY them--of course). Yet anger and pity for your OC and what he faces in his new home is undercut by the distinct feeling that he's able to care for himself and may help dispove some mistaken beliefs about his people ...
Thank you, Dawn! I'm glad the parenthetical asides work in the way I wanted to.
All of those questions are things that my Sindar, Silvan, and Avari would be more than glad to answer, mostly in terms of how little they think about the Valar and Noldor's plans for them in Valinor after rebirth.
I think the perspectives of the groups ignored/maligned by the Silm and HoMe are some of the most interesting for me to write, because if I wanted a Gondolin-view point biased story of them, well, there's the Silm or hundreds of fanfics and forum posts to read. He can take care of himself, for the most point - and since I borrowed his feelings about parts of the situation from my own experiences (mainly the idea that one's birth and where one is from makes the difference between being capable and being an idiot), he cares more about making people understand than gaining pity
I have the feeling he overwhelms the Noldor with arguments and screeds against their biased ideas. Finarfin probably starts wishing for Fëanor to be reborn just so somebody that can keep up with all of the arguments is around. :P
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