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…
My newly drawn map of Aman, as complete as I could make it.
Current Challenge
Bollywood
Prompts this month are films, songs, and tropes from India's dazzling film industry, Bollywood. Read more ...
Random Challenge
Turgon's Rock Opera
On the anniversary of the publication of "The Silmarillion," we’re reflecting on the importance of music in Arda with prompts that come from rock songs. 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.
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.
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.
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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 like this a lot and will be excited to follow along as the story continues to unfold. I like your young Nerdanel and Feanor a lot. I like how you focus on the strength of his being by showing us Nerdanel's reactions to it.
Thank you so much for the wonderful review! :) I'm glad my approach (telling the stories through Nerdanel's pov) works... to me as the writer, Feanor is a difficult character to understand and write, so I usually have to resort to what the other characters may be feeling and thinking about him. I'm really really glad it works.
I like this so much. Like and believe your Nerdanel and especially like the characterization of Feanor, although he barely appears in the story. Laughed aloud at the work he did for Manwe--not a bright as the jewel for Nerdanel. I always write Feanor as, despite whatever other problems he has, incapable of dissembling. Also love the reference in the second chapter of his gifts being two-edged. I like to think that to be loved as only Feanor could love with probably be worth the pain. Sometime would like to explore that theme in a story: if she had to do over again, could she have made another choice?
Thank you very much for the review! :) I'm so so glad you like this - like I mentioned in another reply, I find Feanor difficult to write and to understand, so I usually resort to indirect characterization when he is concerned. I'm glad it worked!
I always write Feanor as, despite whatever other problems he has, incapable of dissembling. That doesn't sound like such an unreasonable approach, it even has canon backing if you look closely... like the sword incident. He could probably twist his words to fit a meaning for those who know what to hear, but in crucial moments, I doubt he could control himself enough to even think about playing pretend. Not to mention that he is certainly confident enough to say what he means, so he wouldn't want to.
I like to think that to be loved as only Feanor could love with probably be worth the pain. My Nerdanel very much agrees. And she does say that she would do it all over again. Love and wisdom don't go well together, but even if they did... in fact, I'm working on something of that sort (but not quite) in A Greater Fire... but I'd love to see different takes!
First, I will lob forth a major criticism: please do not be overly self-conscious concerning original characters! Although as a relative newcomer (soon I won't be able to say that) to JRRT fan fic, I have come to understand that there's a school of ortodoxy that looks askance at OC's, thus the need for the "warning." I have read a number of depictions of OC's in both Silm and LotR ficthat add richness to the tales, and Istarnië's (love her elleth-verse father-name) siblings are certainly among them.
As much as I like Fëanor (my long-suffering scientist-hero), Nerdanel is an incredibly compeling character, and I'm really taken as to how you depict her as a young woman. And her girlish reaction to her worldly, lovewise brother (heh) - I can buy into it!
Please keep the chapters coming including your OCs!
This read like a breeze... as I so can see Nerdanel running away after he gave her the gift, cheeks flushed, heart racing like a young woman experiencing the first thoughts on love. Before I knew it, I clicked on the next chapter, wanting to know what would happen next. Dayum Elleth, that image of Fëanor:
They swept over her again now, as he stood pressed against the door, a fist half-clenched against the sooty leather apron for protection in the forge.
I need something cool to drink :) I don’t think she reacts childish, but youthful, standing on the brink of adulthood like a rosebud that onlookers like Feanor know will blossom beautifully, but she cannot or will not see it. As for using OC’s, I always find them a delightful addition to a painting where the canon characters form the base, it are the lovely touches of the OC’s (perhaps that colouring outside the lines) that makes this picture you paint here believable. Oloste tells what we see or can imagine what goes through her mind, the heeding … well that is what big brothers do. I want to read this again (I will admit for the 3rd time then). Thank you for sharing this with us!
My favorite line: "...and watcher her even as she had watched him. More, perhaps. Touched her mind in those unguarded, open moments."
In elleth!verse, could Feanor have known that the girl he met near the lake was Mahtan's daughter? And could that be the reason why he went to Mahtan's workshop to be an apprentice?
This is just gorgeous Elleth: the emotions are so palpable and you just paint this vivid scene of these two. It reads like a dance of courting. I have to stew on this for a while to be a tad more eloquent... hehe.
The review does read sufficiently eloquent to me. hon. :) I'm so glad this ficlet worked for you - and as for the palpable emotions, I'll have to admit that before writing this I took a look through your stories - 'The Last Words' is one of my favourite Nerdanel pieces of yours, and you're one of the few writers who really shines when it comes to emotions, so... thank you. Not just for the review.
And just so you know, I love the 'dance of courting' simile you used. There, how's that for a lack of eloquence?
So it does indeed - I'd love to follow Feanor on that quest of his own, but at best the following stories will be evenly distributed between the two. The focus, I think, I going to remain on Nerdanel.
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.