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] 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…
[Artwork] Map of Valinor by Aprilertuile
My newly drawn map of Aman, as complete as I could make it.
Bollywood
Prompts this month are films, songs, and tropes from India's dazzling film industry, Bollywood. Read more ...
Holiday Party
No matter if you're in the Northern or Southern hemisphere, it's a time of year to think about holidays. Whether you're bundling up in blankets or slipping a swimsuit into your suitcase, we invite you to an SWG holiday party! 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.
Elrond Week 2024
Elrond Week is a fandom event dedicated to Elrond Peredhel that will run from July 10th to July 16th on Tumblr.
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.
I am so glad to be able to comment purely as a reader now that the story is posted - I loved this from beginning to end! There is just so much to like, from the idea that Maitimo's brothers are trying (with mixed success) to take care of him and protect him, Carnistir's thoughts on Macalaurë not telling Maitimo the glaringly obvious, to Maitimo's determination as soon as he finds out what's going on to set it right.
Thank you so much! I imagine Maedhros as a very powerful and charismatic personality. Writing him in this situation was a balancing exercise between weakness and strength. I really appreciated your help and suggestions with all of it!
Idril, I love this! So much of it speaks to me.
Of course your choice of Maitimo and Carnistir, my two favorite characters to write about, and in particular Carnistir's role in using osanwe to try to ease his brother speaks to how I personally see his character. Although I also enjoyed those quick glimpses of the other brothers, which felt spot-on to me! (Curufinwe washing the crown with his tears! *goes weak-kneed*)
And of course, Mithrim in the winter under your descriptive powers was simply stunning. (In my own personal Mithrim, on this Yule day, pouring rain is slowly effacing our snow, so I prefer your version. ;) The setting comes to life as you write it: the mountains behind the lake, the sparkle of the snow, the opulence of their tents. Even the detail about Maitimo having trouble standing on the snow rang true to me! (I have lots of practice and still half-slid across my backyard this morning to take care of the chickens.)
(And of course I am thrilled as all get-out to receive as a gift a story set during a winter holiday that is not fluffy! I love both the notes of darkness and the implied bittersweet happy ending: a story that ended with satisfaction without the need for the cute or the saccharine. Heathen that I am, this felt perfect to me for the Yule season.)
That satisfying ending is probably my favorite bit of this piece: that Maitimo's first public act as king was to give the crown to Fingolfin. I imagine this similarly (though I've never written this, so you'd have no way to know, so this was a lovely discovery and coincidence) and love all the symbolic weight here, including his intention to bring peace, which I believe motivated most of his actions in the First Age, until he succumbed to the Oath and the kinslayings.
In short, this was such a wonderful and perfect gift for me to receive. Thank you so much for thinking of me and taking your time and skill to make something for me that I love so much. <3
Thanks for your kind words, I'm blushing now ;-)
I have to admit to drawing some inspiration from your Carnistir. I've tried to make a character who canonically is "harsh and quick to anger" also well-intentioned and hopefully relatable. And Maitimo... I enjoy writing him. He's such a strong, layered and multi-faceted character... I was really happy when you asked for a story about him!
Given the tone and content of the Silmarillion, fluff can very easily become jarring and OOC. Your request graciously spared me from having to walk that tightrope ;-)
You perfectly understood my intentions with the ending: a small ray of rightness and hope in the darkness. Of course this is the Silmarillion, so we all know exactly how it's going to end, but at least this one deed of Maitimo's brings about some good.
I hope you and yours have a great holiday season!
This is wonderful.
Thank you for letting me know, it's wonderful to hear from readers who enjoy what I write!
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