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
Pride
Create a fanwork using a prompt from an LGBTQIA+ person, choosing from music, art, poetry, and quotations. 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.
I am noticing the second time around so many details that I rushed through on the first read--galloping to the end. I leave some more comments on the chapters as I go! It is incredibly creative and unique.
Both QN and Return to Aman deserve multiple rereads to garner all the small details, lovely descriptions, vivid characterizations. I'll start rereading them both
I've just realised that although the centering and bold text have copied across, the italics have not: I'll have to go back through and put them back in! I hope it doesn't make Feanor's dialogue too hard to read. This sort of thing is the reason I haven't got to copying across all of Return to Aman yet!
I really liked the scene with Sauron. There was a bit of mystery about who he was, and why he would "help" (unless he's not actually helping?). I wonder when we will meet him again, and if spirit-Fëanor with fight Morgoth head on at some point!
Yes indeed, help from Sauron is to be treated with considerable caution! (I'm sure it's fine. That fine upstanding citizen Sauron is entirely to be relied upon!)
I think the parts with Fëanor and Sauron talking together are my favorite one. This one is very sinister and seems to imply that, somehow, Fëanor has been working for Morgoth all along and Morgoth is somehow... fond of him?
Well, Morgoth does hate Feanor most of all: that's probably about as close to 'fond' as Morgoth can get! I think Morgoth tried to make Feanor into his tool. He didn't entirely succeed!
Really liked the fight between Fëanor and Sauron. It reminds of the song contest between Finrod and Sauron, and the images used were great: kinslaying versus the humiliation of Melkor! I hope for some Fëanor versus Melkor now, and wonder if Fëanor will ultimatly go to Mandos and meet with Fingolfin again.
I'm really enjoying all the magic woven throughout this story. It feels very authentic to me. I love it when Maglor and Maedhros show their superpowers!
“Thank you,” Elrond said, his eyes bright with laughter. “I’d hate to feel my education lacked something compared with a century or so of the finest teaching in Tirion, despite war, orcs and the Black Enemy of All the World.”
I really love this chapter it is one of my favorites. I know these comments I am leaving are insufficient. Sometimes I can write long rambling comments and other times I can't, but I just want you to know how much I love details of this story.
Elrond's curiosity and his optimism are young Elrond as I have always imagined him!
Oh I was so happy to see another chapter. What a lovely end. I like the fact that Celebrimbor wears the Star, even though it is hard. And that he staus among the remnants of the Fëanorion loyalists and free thralls.
His conversation with Elrond reveals so much of both of them. I'm glad Elrond is looking, has thought it out and that they both agree some shouting is necessary. Their palpable frustration that they missed signs of what Maedrhos and Maglor would do in the end and that they were deceived rings true.
Elrond's to speak for them is just right--as we know from your others fics he does accomplish that. And poor Celebrimbor is right--Fëanor's grandson sailing into Alqualondë demanding a Silmaril is asking for trouble. But the advice to seek out Finrod--because he knows everyone and that he of all people would still be willing to help is perfect.
and I loved the twist at the end! That Fëanor wrote and rewrote this history and that it changed in the retelling and is waiting to be found in Elrond's vast library.
Im glad he kept his promise to Maedhros--that really mattered to Maedhros and I'm relieved Fëanor respected that.
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.