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.
Largely focused on Númenor, its fall, and the aftermath, as seen from the perspective of two Mannish scientists, bit players in some ways, but who nonetheless cast their shadows across the history of Middle Earth.
A story of three friends in Númenor, one of whom attracts the attention of the High Priest. What does friendship mean in the shadow of the Black Temple?
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…
Bollywood
Prompts this month are films, songs, and tropes from India's dazzling film industry, Bollywood. Read more ...
Random Challenge
Another Place in Time
Move beyond the places and times of familiar events to consider what was going on elsewhere in Arda at the same time as a major event covered in The Silmarillion. How--if at all--did the event impact what was transpiring elsewhere at the same time? 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.
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.
Scribbles & Drabbles 2024
A chill Tolkien event, where artists make art, and authors write little stories in response. Begins in June and ends in November.
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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.
Got a little choked up right at the end there. I was glad he made it. Orcas are great favourites of mine and I do love this and hope many orcs either delieberatelly or accidentally found themselves in Ulmo's realm.
I think it does answer something, I just find it hard to put into words. But it answers in a hopeful kind of way.
So glad you liked the idea of the orcas and that you were rooting for him to make it! He is definitely not meant to be the only one, despite the difficulty of escape.
And I'm happy that you think there is a hopeful answer somewhere in there!
OMG! This is so lovely. I am an absolute sucker for redemption. Not one of those readers who like to think that Orcs are corrupted Elves. Whatever your intention, this story does not force me to chose, although I think you did. "He must be changing, changing back? No, not back..." I am presuming you meant that he was changed from an Elf into an Orc. But I am just gonna ignore that consideration--the horror is too much for me. However he came into existence, he is now one of Ulmo's most beautiful creatures. That's a lot of redemption. Now if we can only save him from what Men are doing to Ulmo's realm.
I'm glad you like the idea of the Orc being redeemed by becoming an orca!
In the First and Second Ages, orcas would not have been a threatened species, of course. It's terribly sad that they are now and I do hope they can be saved.
As you say, in this story it's not important whether the Orcs were originally Elves, Men or some other being, just that they had not consented to be made into Orcs.
I don't think this Orc remembers what he was, very clearly; he remembers just enough to choose freedom when he hears the call of Ulmo.
I have committed myself on the question of their origin elsewhere in my stories, but as this story is an AU, their origin could of course be different here, if you want it to be!
I found your exploration of the mental barriers particularly interesting - how there is much more to the Orc's escape than removing himself physically from the realm of Morgoth, and how he had to - and managed to! - overcome his terror of the sun and ultimately his fear of the sea. Glad there's a happy ending for this brave orc (and others like him)!
This is, of course, an AU. But there are some hints in canon that Morgoth and Sauron might have employed such methods, starting with the manipulation of the elves of Cuivienen into being afraid of Orome. I was also thinking of Gollum choking on lembas and Frodo's comment on that. (There is also a throw-away remark in the Silm that Finrod's watchtower on the coast proved unnecessary, because Morgoth never attempted an attack by sea.)
I assume the uruk-hai and their First Age ancestors would not have been aware of their fear as fear and considered themselves courageous even while they were enslaved by it. But I'm glad that you called this orc brave! Because that was very much what I wanted to get across, how brave as well as lucky he had to be to escape.
Yes, I want there to have been others like him! And I sneaked in a suggestion that what Uinen did could have been a rescue of Osse, too, even though Tolkien makes it sound more like feminine pacification and despite the fact that Osse as an Ainu would be less vulnerable.
Yes, it works very well with the canon hints about the fear of sunlight and running water! I didn't even think of Gollum's horror of Elven food but it probably plays into it, too. I'm sure that the Orcs, at their most Orcish, wouldn't have realised their fears - it would have felt like common sense to them, I suppose - but once they do try to escape, getting over these barriers must be a greater challenge even than the sheer hopelessness of their situation (which the Orcs in LotR discuss - how they hate working for Sauron, but how they expect that the other side will kill them, so what choice do they have). Which must be discouraging enough! So yes, your Orc definitely comes across as brave to make that decision and go through with it.
I really like the thought that Osse might feel some sympathy for these Orcs because he, too, escaped from Morgoth's influence. As an Ainu, he probably had it easier than the Orcs, but it still must have been a struggle. Raiyana has written a couple of fics that explore U?nen's role in Osse's redemption, and I found those extremely compelling as well!
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.