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 ...
Pride
Create a fanwork using a prompt from an LGBTQIA+ person, choosing from music, art, poetry, and quotations. 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.
This is fun!
Somehow I hadn't quite expected Feanor to adopt a position like Saussure's, but the way he treats the Archivist sounds definitely very characteristic!
I like how you've handled the points of view, with the Archivist narrating to Nolondil and Nolondil's own angle and the other scholar in the background.
Thanks! This is my first piece of fiction so it was a bit of a gamble...The viewpoints just kind of wrote themselves, it wasn't really planned aside from a general idea of the setting.
You're right - given what we know about Feanor's linguistic contributions I don't believe he'd have truly adopted a post-structuralist-ish approach to language. However, I definitely wouldn't put it past a young Feanor adopting such a controversial pose at the very outset in an attempt to blow up the ivory tower. I think he'd have soon changed his mind, however, and his disagreements with the etymologists would have adopted a more nuanced form.
Hah! I suspect young Feanor is just playing the devil's advocate here, but it seems the archivist has fallen for it head over heels! It was very amusing to read, and I love how Nolondil both understands why the old elf is upset, and accepts that maybe this over-confident youngster could help him solve his own puzzle. The grumpy geologist was very relatable, too. Every library needs someone who just wants everyone to shut up! :D
I suspect Feanor was either playing devil's advocate, or will only hold this particular belief for a little while...I think it must have been a real rollercoaster for Tirions loremasters when he started poking his nose into different branches of knowledge.
And yes - there was an element of wish-fulfilment in the scholar's responses. Harking back to university days...
This is hilarious! Nolondil is a wise man and not without a sense of humor. I am sure young Feanor could have challenged the patience of a saint.
There were a number of odd symbols hovering above the letters which he just couldn’t make out.
Been there! Done that! Earlier today I sent a friend with better eyesight than mine a citation from The Shibboleth I want to use in a character bio and asked if she could proof and correct some of the diacritical marks for me! Hardly research on an ancient text, but a challenge for my poor old eyes!
Haha! The image I had in mind was actually Arabic, having tried to learn it at one point. Not that I think early Telerin looked like Arabic. In fact I started wondering when I wrote this when exactly a language like Telerin would first have been written down. Presumably not before Rumil.
Ah, Arabic! I am certain Feanor would love to comment on the efficiency and aesthetics of those squiggles!
Maybe not before Rumil. Or maybe there were others before him who tried to invent forms of writing and they are not discussed in the texts because they were not as widely used. I'll accept a range of interpretations in the service of a good story. In real world history scholars are constantly reassesing such questions. There are a number of different Mesoamerican writing systems which over time scholars have assessed and re-assessed and in many cases they are still studying/arguing about which came first and the degree to which certain logogramatic systems allow for syllabic spelling of words. Those puzzles remain open to further examination. It's certainly entertaining to apply those concepts to gaps in Tolkien's history, right?
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