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] An exercise in music... And patience by Aprilertuile
Makalaurë was sitting at the harp in his music room. He was holding a dark blindfold in his hands and was looking at it with much scepticism.
[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…
Bollywood
Prompts this month are films, songs, and tropes from India's dazzling film industry, Bollywood. Read more ...
Strength and Beauty
Create a fanwork using the Melville quote about the relationship between strength and beauty. 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.
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.
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.
Wow. I would not have thought 'Ungoliant' for 'hero', but you make it work. Very nice use of the riddle. (I still can't say I feel much sympathy for Ungoliant or for Morgoth either seperately or together, but you write them quite well.)
Thank you! I've had the idea of giving Ungoliant a voice and a personality for a while, since in my opinion there's always more than one side to any story and Ungoliant is no different. Ofcourse, Ungoliant is certainly no 'hero' in the conventional sense of the word, but she's more than just an "Evil Spider". As for the riddle, I was writing this piece and suddenly I realized how well it fit in the text.
Ungoliant and Melkor are no sympathetic characters although Melkor is one of my darlings, but I'm glad you liked my version!
What a perfect choice of character for these prompts! And a very sympathetic (if one can say so) depiction of Ungoliant. I particularly liked your observations about her Theme in the Music, and her thoughts about what would be most precious to Melkor. I grinned at the description of Melkor's hands! They're not going to stay pale and perfect much longer, are they! For some reason, I also really enjoyed the way you described Ungoliant's shrug. It underlines her spider-ness so neatly. Bringing the darkness riddle into this was also inspired. And that last line is a real killer! In conclusion, so much good stuff!
Yay! I'm so glad you liked it!
I reread the passage in The Silmarillion a couple of times to get everything right, and there is so much potential for Ungoliant as a 'real' character - there are hints as to her thoughts (initially not wanting to follow Melkor, for example) but those are in my humble opinion not expanded enough upon (as is sadly the case for almost every character in The Silmarillion). This was partly also a character study, as I'm sure you've noticed, discovering who Ungoliant was and where she came from, and what the source of her hunger is. I enjoyed writing the shrug-thing a lot, as well as the other little things that indicate her spider-ness. I think I never actually mentioned she's a spider :)
Ah, Melkor! I think that what is most precious to him is not any material object, but rather the people he surrounds himself with, as well as Arda itself since he's invested such a large part of himself in it. Which can be used to argument that Melkor is the biggest egoist in Arda's history. But that's just my opinion ^^ It was really fun to write about his hands, knowing what would happen to them later. Though, I (re)discovered he only burns them when he tries to forge the Silmarils into a crown, which makes me wonder why he didn't simply order Mairon, professional blacksmith, to make it while he hovered close by. I don't think Mairon would've made the mistake of touching them once he heard Melkor's tales about Fëanor and how he acquired the Silmarils; in which case they both wouldn't have burned their hands.
I must admit that the last line is a paraphrasing of the introduction in the movie: "And in the darkness of Gollum's cave, it consumed him." Just like the poem, it just fit too well into the narrative and I couldn't resist adding it.
My response got kinda carried away; I'm just happy you enjoyed this little tale enough to review!
Oh dear, a second comment to respond to yours! I was sort of assuming that Melkor's most precious possession would either be his pride or his liberty/independence, both of which the Valar sort of tried to take from him, but it's intriguing to think that it might be the people he chose to surround him. That's another fascinating idea, that they might have meant a lot more to him than mindless minions!
I always assumed that he burned his hand while clutching the Silmarils during the theft, so I guess Mairon couldn't have helped with that. That's something else that I loved, though, that Ungoliant's unlight couldn't harm Melkor's hands (though she feels it should :D) but the Silmarils did. Perhaps he was just too arrogant to consider the possibility that anything might harm him. Yet more food for thought!
Pride and liberty/independance are what Melkor is, somehow, not what he necessarily wants most. When the Valar imprisoned him they cut off an intrinsic part of Melkor's soul. I don't think they were aware of this (as mentioned in the story, Melkor keeps his Themes, and thus his identity, carefully secret so no one can exploit them) and so didn't understand what they were doing, but it certainly didn't help their case. Melkor is the rebellious one among the Ainur, the one who did not blindly follow Iluvatar's Themes but instead did what he himself liked best, and this is what fundamentally sets him apart from the other Ainur. Since he is literally a part of the world, it is not that strange an idea that he is supposed to rule it. This again ties into the liberty/independance part of him; Melkor is simply unable to sit back and watch while others build their realms and kingdoms upon Arda, be they Ainu, Elda or Human. This is also part of the reason why he destroyed so many of the Valar's works before he was first chained, the other part being that it was just so much fun :D
That said however, I don't think Melkor sees himself as the Supreme Overlord or something similar, instead building true relationships with those around him (I'm a fervent Angbang shipper, I admit it, and not entirely unbiased in this matter). He is not against other people as a principle, it's just that those others always want to take what is his.
I assumed the same thing until I reread the chapter, but during the flight the Silmarils are actually inside a crystal box that does become heated to the touch when he refuses to give them up to Ungoliant and she strangles him, but he never actually touches them. It is stated in the book that he only burned his hands when he picked them up to set them in his crown.
Melkor is way too powerful for Ungoliant to harm him, until she devours the power of the Trees (imagine the enormous strength of the sun only being a single fruit from a Tree, two of which grew nect to each other!) I think that later on that power did fade away as she exerted herself, but in that moment she was the stronger of the two. This might ofcourse also have something to do with Melkor still not discarding his physical body or changing his shape, and being taken by surprise. I think that in a fair fight Melkor could've defeated her, even swollen as she was then.
The thing with Ungoliant's Unlight not harming him while the Silmarils could... well, I think that's only because Varda hallowed the Silmarils, which is in my interpretation basically channeling Iluvatar and using his power to enchant the stones.
Ofcourse this is all just my headcanon, feel free to ignore or accept it :)
All-devouring hunger was the only thing she saw in their hands. The Valar did not possess that thread of darkness, that core of Nothing that made up her being; they could not understand the starvation that was their mercy.
I can sympathize with this.
The whole story is an impressive look at feelings and facts through a totally different perspective than I, for one, have ever tried very hard to do.
It is a virtuoso effort and very successful.
Thank you for your kinds words! Ungoliant was, for me too, surprisingly fun and intriguing to write. I'm so glad you liked it!
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