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 ...
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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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 think my level of appreciation for this work is best shown by how clueless i am about who all the characters are. i have no idea what happened (Idril made Celeborn dance with Galadriel) but i really enjoyed it in a 'film with no subtitles' way... i mean, i know the Silmarillion well, but this...
I'm teetering back and forth between 'oh dear, did I lose you with the nicknames?' and 'you had the non-Noldorin experience of the Mereth Aderthad - it was a nice party, but there seemed to be quite a bit going on with the Noldor behind the scenes...'
I wanted to capture how much was going on during the Mereth Aderthad, and that everyone had their own experience of it. Ending on a muted note was intentional, because I feel like while it was still a festive occasion, it was probably not quite as bright and carefree as the memory of it would come to appear as things got steadily worse for the elves.
This is a wonderful fic - it's so cool to see this event from multiple perspectives! I especially love the way you write Celeborn, Galadriel, and tiny Idril (she is just the cutest!).
Awesome! When I saw that we were already at the Mereth Aderthad just after the Helcaraxe, I was a bit shocked ("did we really plan it like that"), but you managed to cover so much material in this fic that it doesn't feel like anything is missing. From Fingolfin's retrospection and reasoning for the feast to Fingon's reservations (and surprise! I particularly enjoyed that bit!), to Turgon's and Aredhel's rather strong feelings (understandable in Turgon's case, mixed in Aredhel's), to little Idril's excitement and matchmaking attempts, to Celeborn and Galadriel and finally, to Finrod's heroic efforts, you really put it all into a coherent and very enjoyable story arc. I really liked what you did with Celeborn; in the books, I find him rather colourless (no pun intended), but you painted him as a headstrong but reasonable and immensely likeable young man deserving of Galadriel's love. It all ends on a reconciliatory note, as the Mereth Aderthad should. In conclusion, very well done! Thank you so much for sharing.
Aw, thank you! The Mereth Aderthad did happen fairly quickly after the Helcaraxë, only twenty years later - and a fairly busy twenty years, I would think, between the rescue of Maedhros, him ceding kingship, and the Nolofinwions/Arafinwions trying to get established in Beleriand. I tried to capture as much as I could in what was meant to be a short story. My original plan was just the adult Nolofinwions, but then I couldn't resist little Idril, and since she was playing with Sindarin kids, Celeborn came wandering through... (I've always thought it was a shame we didn't get more about Celeborn in the books. He had to have been more than we see for Galadriel to have fallen in love with him.)
I can't help thinking that it's great to see them have fun while they still can, because later, it's going downhill from there. So let's raise our glasses. To the Mereth Aderthad!
I think the Mereth Aderthad really stood out in the memories of the Noldor for that reason - it was a bright spot, and a time when they still felt things might work out.
This is wonderful! A feast of re-uniting with some sour grapes in it, just as there always would be, or there would be no "re" in the uniting.
I feel like you have weaved so many threads into this that I hardly know where to begin, but it really places this feast right in the middle of all those big events, and also points forward to others. I enjoyed Celegorm a lot - I've always had a soft spot for those completely underdeveloped characters, so I love seeing them get a moment in the spotlight. :D
Yes, there's always some sour grapes - with large families, it's pretty much inevitable that there's going to be at least one minor quarrel going on in the background at any given gathering.
I wanted to try to capture how the feast was different things to different people - and also sort of the calm before the storm that they'd look back on afterwards.
I should probably write more of the Galadriel-Celeborn strand of this at some point, and explain what it was they'd argued about...
(And I am terribly slow catching up on comments here on SWG, sorry!)
The alternating viewpoints and the different range of emotions covered made this a pleasure to read.
Such a fascinating contradiction built into the Silm: the ship-burning by Feanor and the march across the Grinding Ice seems unforgivable. But if the two sides of the Noldor split remain at total odds, in this strange land, and facing Morgoth, they're clearly in even greater danger. And then again, the pull of all their old ties of family and friendship.
Well-portrayed!
Was that a tiny joke in there about Dorwinion wine? Or maybe it's just a longstanding tradition among the Sindar not to tell where the good stuff comes from . . .
The Noldor did put themselves into a bit of a bind with their in-fighting...
That was less a joke about Dorwinion wine than the Fëanorions being looked on with distrust by other elves, to the point that they can't always get straight answers to what should be simple questions. "Nice wine, where does it come from?" "South of here." (As Curufin thinks to himself 'we're about as far north as it gets without being in Mogoth's territory, everything is south of here!')
(Sorry about the delayed response - I didn't get a notification. Don't know if my email's being weird and sending stuff to spam that shouldn't be or what.)
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.