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.
Subscribe to the SWG Newsletter
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 didn't want Elwing and Earendil to take another step past the first room because of all the history they were disturbing. I felt they were desecrating sacred ground. I love the Feanorions, and I can, in a sense, comprehend Elwings need to understand them.
Thank you! That 'wrongness' was exactly how I imagined it - Elwing and Eärendil are trespassing into a place that was specifically not meant for them. That said, however, it is understandable that Elwing does enter - even past that first room!
Trying to understand was all that they could do - the rest was indeed out of their hands.
A Fëanorian Museum is the vibe that I was going for - unintentional and personal, but so very telling.
Nerdanel is not dead, but I seem to remember her moving back to Mahtan's place after the First Kinslaying? I'm not sure; but that's what happened here at least.
This was such a melancholy walk through the abandoned house - but such a lovely read. Elwing's desire to understand the family that hurt her own family so much is understandable, and it pains me a little that she did not find what she was looking for - although I suppose she may in time come to realise that the humanity and love and life she saw in the portraits and musical instruments, the comfortable furniture and the carelessly discarded cloaks aren't contradicting their later deeds, but simply part of the same condition. Maybe she can find closure after all. I hope so.
Loved your vision of the House of Feanor, abandoned but retaining its original character. I could picture the house very clearly, and it felt very true to my mental image of the Feanorians in happier times. I also loved the composure and bravery you gave Elwing. Brava.
Elwing, and many other people, see the Fëanorians as one-dimensional monsters, and Elwing learns the hard way here that that's not true. I think Elwing is a very complicated woman that was broken in her childhood (Second Kinslaying) and didn't ever realize it, since everyone suffered from that disaster. This is her attempt at taking the first step on the path towards healing.
As for the house, I imagine Fëanor and Nerdanel kept politics etc far away from their personal life - hence them not living in the palace. So I imagine their chosen/build home to be very 'homy', perhaps the First Homely House, as Imladris is the last left in Middle-Earth?
This is really great. I love the spooky-but-kind-of-sad atmosphere of the abandoned house, and you've really captured the feeling of Elwing's cognative dissonance, knowing all of these normal things belonged to people she can only think of as monsters. I really hope she can find some kind of closure, even if this didn't help very much.
Well, we ARE talking about The Silmarillion here ;) But I agree; abandoned houses have something undeniably tragic about them, and let's not even begin about Elwing's life.
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.