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.
fair analysis... 'fair' is an overworked word, like 'mind'. it can also mean 'accurate' or 'just' or 'mediocre' or 'sunny'... Sauron the mediocre, Turin the sunny, Fëanor the just...
re Numenor, the House of Hador were blond, and they had input into the population of Numenor, so there’s a strain of blond in the family tree.
re the children of the redhaired Nerdanel, my grandad was a redhead, he had three kids, a brunette, a redhead and a strawberry blond (blond with a reddish hint) so in humans at least, it can be a lucky dip.
And sure, "fair" can mean those things, but that isn't how /Tolkien/ uses it--his use is for physical description. Sauron is many things, but mediocre is not one of them--he appears "fair and wise" to the Elves in the Second Age, and after Numenor sinks he loses his ability to take on a "fair" appearance; Turin "grew fair and strong" in Doriath (and is canonically rather gloomy, iirc); Feanor is "fair of face," etc.
I am so happy you did this. I always wished I had the energy and I never did and never would have either. I love to use "fair" in my fanfic vocabulary because it is so very Tolkienesque. I was also one of those who allowed myself to be drawn into discussions of Celegorm's hair color back in the olden days. I had my cake and ate it too! I picked blond for purely aesthetic reasons and nothing to do with vocabulary and chose to think he had a remarkable pretty face even among the Feanorian brothers! I loved the idea that the one who was the least delicate little flower in his personal habits might be the one who had the maiden of Tirion swooning, "Look at that face!"
It's great to have the numbers if ever I should need them! Thanks!
You're welcome! I'm glad you liked it. Tolkien definitely likes this word a lot! I had quite a lot of fun actually, and might do it again if another word jumps out at me.
I like a silver-haired Celegorm myself, if only because it's nice to think that at least one of her grandchildren inherited something of Miriel's looks.
oh, nobody gets my jokes when i write them down. i thought 'Turin the sunny' would have been the giveaway, but then i thought Sauron the mediocre was too...
of course you're right, he generally did mean pretty or blond. or both...
I like this a lot! Kudos to you for running the numbers.
I confess I favor silver-haired or albino Celegorm just for variety, but it's nice to know that canon truly gives no solid indication one way or the other.
Thanks! The nice thing about Sauron is that he's a Maia, so he can have any coloring you want to give him, and it can change at any time up until Numenor sinks. :D
As I said on DW, the only certainty is that the word doesn't refer to Celegorm's mindset! *g* Again, thank you for looking up all these references - it's useful to see them in numbers, whatever one decides to do with the information. In Tolkien's writing as in history, the true meaning of a word sometimes remains mysterious and open to interpretation... which is part of the fun, even if we as readers sometimes wish he'd given us a more definitive description.
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.