New Challenge: Potluck Bingo
Sit down to a delicious selection of prompts served on bingo boards, created by the SWG community.
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: Potluck Bingo
Sit down to a delicious selection of prompts served on bingo boards, created by the SWG community.
Bingo Cards Wanted for Potluck Bingo
Our November-December challenge will be Potluck Bingo, featuring cards created by you! If you'd like to create cards or prompts for cards, we are taking submissions.
Tolkien Meta Week, December 8-14
We will be hosting a Tolkien Meta Week in December, here on the archive and on our Tumblr, for nonfiction fanworks about Tolkien.
New Challenge: Orctober
Orcs on a quest for freedom seek a place sheltered and safe from the Dark Lord. Fulfill prompts to gather the clues needed to bring them to freedom.
[Writing] On a Night of Snow by Elleth
Fingon returns to Barad Eithel after a late-autumn hunt, finding someone unexpected with his wife. The night takes an even more unexpected turn for all three of them.
[Writing] Collection of Potluck Drabbles by Artano
This is a collection of true drabbles completed for the 'Four Words' drabble bingo card.
[Reference] Mapping Arda, Part III: The Second Age by Varda delle Stelle, Anérea
A series of articles featuring fan-made maps of all the lands of Arda. Part III explores the island of Númenor and mainland Middle-earth during the Second Age.
[Writing] Getting Dirty by Elleth
A collection of NSFW ficlets for the "Keep It Clean" bingo card of the 2024 Potluck Bingo.
[Reference] Doom and Ascent: The Argument of ‘Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics’ by Simon J. Cook
Simon reads 'Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics' to conclude his account of the Anglo-Saxon tower of its allegory.
[Artwork] 2024 Potluck Doodles by silmalope
Assorted prompt fills for the 2024 Potluck bingo boards, to varying degrees of completion! :)
[Artwork] A Collection of Maps Exhibiting the Changing Political Landscape in Beleriand by Artano
Created for the 'Geography/Maps/Places' prompt on the "Tolkien meta" bingo board, this is a collection of maps marked with the various people groups showing how they arrived and moved about Beleriand. This collection focuses specifically on the time from the arrival of the Teleri, Vanyar, and…
Potluck Bingo
Help yourself to a collection of prompts on bingo boards designed by members and friends of the SWG. Read more ...
All Good Beasts
Create a fanwork featuring an animal. Show how important a beloved animal is to a character or tell a story through the eyes of an animal. Read more ...
Mapping Arda, Part III: The Second Age by Varda delle Stelle, Anérea
A series of articles featuring fan-made maps of all the lands of Arda. Part III explores the island of Númenor and mainland Middle-earth during the Second Age.
Doom and Ascent: The Argument of ‘Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics’ by Simon J. Cook
Simon reads 'Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics' to conclude his account of the Anglo-Saxon tower of its allegory.
Why People Don't Comment: Data and History From the Tolkienfic Fandom by Dawn Walls-Thumma
A reworking of the 2018 article for Long Live Feedback that includes data from the 2020 Tolkien Fanfiction Survey, pointing to a lack of comments as related to skill, confidence, and community connection.
Part of our Themed Collection series for our newsletter, this collection features fiction, artwork, and essays that transcend the idea of Orcs as the enemy, instead considering their humanity.
Alliterative Verse for Arda by Rhunedhel
Part of our Themed Collection series for our newsletter, this collection features alliterative poems about Middle-earth.
[Artwork] Long-tressed Wingildi by Anérea
"... the long-tressed Wingildi ... spirits of the foam and the surf of ocean."
~ a painted sketch for Scribbles and Drabbles 2024.
[Writing] Partners in Craft by elennalore
Annatar realises that he might like Celebrimbor too much.
[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.
Teitho November/December Contest: Healing
The theme for Teitho's November/December contest is healing.
Lord of the Rings Secret Santa 2024
LotR SESA has been ongoing for twenty-one years and is running again this year as a prompt meme hosted on AO3 for all genres of Tolkien-based fanfiction.
Kiliel Week 2024
Kiliel Week is a Tumblr event for fanworks about the Kili/Tauriel pairing.
November challenge at tolkienshortfanworks
The challenge for November has been posted to the tolkienshortfanworks community on Dreamwidth. Thematic prompt: refuge. Formal challenge: include imitation of a sound. As always, these can be filled independently and also freely combined with SWG and other challenges. New participants welcome!
November 2024 Call for Papers and Proposals
Calls for papers and proposals for conferences and publications that are open during the month of November 2024.
Okay, I'm impressed! :D My mind is reeling at the thought of writing without certain vowels. Very well done, insightful ficlets that don't suffer for the challenge you've undertaken here.
Thank you, Dawn! I am pleased you like them! I am surprised at how they turned out, considering it was such a weird experiment, and I had never written short pieces, I never know when to stop! After doing the first one, I began the second one and then it took a while for the idea to do the lot so that I could contribute to the "Five Things" theme!
These are well-done little ficlets, each one packs a bang within the short space. I got a big kick out of all the things that didn't happen to Sauron. Enjoyed your imagery, "writhe like dark snakes," as well as the sly humor. I think my favorite is Call to Aman, but yeah I quite enjoyed Thranduil getting one over on him too. Even without the challenge you set yourself of not using words with certain vowels, these would be good. I wouldn't have even noticed if you hadn't pointed it out. I think the challenge might have caused you to think about the word usage more and so it added rather than taking away from the little stories.
Thank you, elfscribe! I am so very pleased you enjoyed them!
I am not sure which one is my favourite. The ring one was the most difficult, but Thranduils's was the first one I wrote, and slashy too, so I was rather pleased with myself. Then, Call to Aman was done without "e", which is allegedly the hardest, so that one was a little triumph on its own. And Pharazon one, well, it had to be done!
Yes, I certainly had to think every word of the text, which is surely a very sensible thing to do, with or without challenges on missing letters.
Reposting my Mefa review here:
A very clever set of ficlets each of which packs a bang within the short space. Not only do they depict five things that didn’t happen to Sauron (and each one made me smile, I so enjoy Russa’s sly humor) but Russandol added an extra challenge of not using a certain vowel in each ficlet. If she hadn’t said that’s what she was doing, I’d have never have noticed because the language flows quite well. I enjoyed the imagery [“From the high stone city walls, Annatar watched two large birds of prey circling majestically above the plains. The cool breeze played with the loose strands of his black hair, making them writhe like dark snakes.”] I can’t pick a favorite out of the five, although I must say I did enjoy Thranduil’s little bit of manipulation. Knowing Russa's Sauron from her marvelous "Chasing Mirages" fic gave these ficlets an added bit of spice.
I'm so pleased you like them! I'm not sure I have a favourite either. Folly at the Sammath Naur and Call to Aman were the hardest by far compared to the others, so I felt proud of completing them. The kinky Thranduil was a victory (not just for him) because it was the first one I wrote and a bed scene.
Thank you very much for your posting your review here, otherwise I guess the comments get lost at the MEFA site after nthe new year starts.
Wow, that was amazing! Was it hard to write? I admit I couldn’t help checking if you really hadn’t use the vowel you shouldn’t have, because each little drabble flowed so well it was hard to remember you had restrictions while writing them.
I take this as little Aus from “Chasing Mirages”, because this Sauron has the same feeling your Mairon has. The first one, Lies in Eregion, actually seems like it could fit very well in your story… what he says about the eagle giving him a lift, it’s like he’s telling Eönwë’s story to fool Celebrimbor.
While all of them were interesting, I think my favourite was the second one. Making the Ring seems like such a stupid idea when you put it like that… And really, Sauron was such a great manipulator that he could have ruled most of Middle Earth if he had retained his subtlety. Trying to copy Morgoth was doomed to fail.
And of course, the last one. Not because of all the suffering Sauron caused, but because no one can convince my “Chasing Mirages” isn’t what really happened, and I want Mairon and Eönwë to be happy together.
Seriously, great job!
Oooh, thank you, Alasse! Yes, this is my Mairon from Chasing Mirages, I had already written the first ten-twelve chapters at the time, though I had only begun to post them, so he and I were well acquainted by then. They are indeed AUs from that story, though you they also fit as AUs in the original canon, and you don't need to have read Mirages to follow these ones. Believe me, I did not accidentally slip any of the "missing" letters, I checked. It was hard to do but fun, having to think of each single word, however tiny. The Ring story was one of the hardest. No "i" for "ring" or for "it". The one without the "e" was tricky, too.
I had great difficulty reconciling Sauron's clever, subtle seduction of the elves in Eregion and the Númenóreans with some of the really unbelievable (i.e. stupid) things he did, not so much making the Ring, where he grossly miscalculated, but at least he thought he was gaining something in return, but mainly during the Third Age. Tolkien gave us the hints of a great backstory only to turn him into a very pathetic stereotype of a villain in Lord of the Rings. I love the story, don't get me wrong, but it would have been so much better if his Sauron had been as cunning there as in the past.
You want Mairon and Eönwë to be happy together? Ay, so do I. At the moment, that's looking highly unlikely, pero quién sabe...
This was a really cool idea on all levels. I love especially the second ficlet with the destruction of the Ring, when he drank back the power ... what a stunning image!
I must switch on notifications for comments, unless they are the default and I missed the message in all the excitement of the site rebuild. Thank you, Dawn!
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