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
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 ...
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.
What a gripping story you have written, Robinka! You successfully inhabited the mind of Carcharoth. In doing so, you created a fearsome creature yet a vulnerable one, too. Carcharoth's pain and subsequent frenzy are readily apparent. You describe the fight between Carcharoth and Huan vividly - you write action so well. And as horrific as Carcharoth might be and with all the devastation that the animal caused at his master's behest, I have to say I kind of feel badly for the creature in that he would have had a happier and less eventful life out hunting aurochs* in the eastern steppes of Middle-earth than as Morgoth's lupine slave. That your story elicted this flicker of sympathy speaks to your ability to "see" the tale from the wolf's perspective. Well done!
*I love, love, love the detail of the auroch! Tolkien had an interest in paleontology, and his "kine of Araw" surely sound like they were aurochs. It makes eminent sense to me that some fauna from the Pleistocene would still exist in the First Age.
I have to say that this story gave me a headache, because I wrote in Polish first and I struggled then with the translation. It wouldn't have been as tough if I'd written just in English, but the challenge meant the challenge ;)
Oh, and the aurochs -- I wondered what animal might be a challenge for Carcharoth and I thought that it should be one mightier that an European buffalo. I'm so glad that my idea worked. :D
Tak sobie pomyślałam, że będzie miło jeśli ktoś zostawi recenzję w języku polskim, więc postanowiłam, że tym "kimś" będę ja. :)
Bardzo dobrze napisana historia! Ciężko jest napisać coś z punktu widzenia zwierzaka (choćby nie wiem jak bardzo była to interesująca postać) na tyle znaków i na takim poziomie. Przyczyna jest prosta - ludzie nie "czują" tak jak zwierzęta. Hmm, no może czasami.... ;) Ale nie odbiegając od tematu, chcę powiedzieć, że genialnie oddałaś charakter tego polowania. Posłużyłaś się instynktami wilka i na potrzeby tej historii wyciągnęłaś z niego to, co najlepsze. To, że go ścigają, nie oznacza, że jest ofiarą. ;) Wstawienie rozmów "istot dwunożnych" sprawiło, że całość jest jeszcze bardziej interesująca i "żyje". :) A teraz przejdźmy do wersji angielskiej... pod wersją angielską. :)))
Dzięki serdeczne za przeczytanie i za komentarz. :) No, było z tym opowiadaniem trochę problemów, poza tym chyba jednak wolę pisać po angielsku. Jakoś lepiej brzmi ;) Chociaż po polsku też nieźle, ale to nie jest to jednak. Chyba się odzwyczaiłam ;) za te wszystkie lata. Ale przejdźmy do wersji angielskiej...
As I said under the Polish version - the story is brilliant! Firstly, a few words about translation - it's really good. I'm giving you my bow to this part of your work. I know how difficult it was, because it required a change of thinking. Great job! Both versions are wonderful, but I think that the English version is the one that I like more. Maybe it's because of the fact that for me all Tolkien stories sounds better in English than in Polish, though it is my native language. ;) Yeah, I know it's weird.
Secondly, something about the wolf - I know he was a bad, bad animal ;), but as long as I was reading your story there were some moments that I felt sorry for him. This never-ending pain that was growing inside him was cruel. After all, he was an animal, a wolf. And I like wolves very much. ;)
Again, thanks a million for reading and reviewing :) I appreciate your kind words very much. I too, at some point, felt sorry for Carcharoth, and I wanted to show that he was meant to be cruel and an ultimate baddie, he was still an animal, with no say upon the ways in which he'd been bred and trained. I'm glad that my idea somehow worked.
I know I reviewed this elsewhere, but still the re-read is fabulous! I don't think its easy to crawl under the skin of such a beast and yet, as you write, make me as a reader still feel sympathy for him. The fight with Huan is just... wow and just to think that you wrote it in Polish first, then in English: deepest respect here. Well done, what a ride (again!).
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.