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.
*grins* Thank you! I was really trying to get across that neither character was a pure victim or pure abuser; so glad that got across. Thanks for the review. -Marta
So exicted to see that you are posting here and taking on some Silmarillion themes as well. You argue your case well, for the level of grief and horror that Maglor would experience when viewing such a scene and remembering what he had already done and realizing what he could be called upon to do in the future. Vividly written. One part was a bit different from the way that I imagine it (to think that anyone could consider the Simarili pretty baubles, much less a son of Feanor--I guess I am of the school who thinks of them as combining a level of technology and magic that strains the imagination to even comprehend or describe). When Tolkien speaks of the Noldor surpassing even the Valar in their skill and creative capacity in some instances; it is always the Simarili that pop first into my head.
Thank you very much for your kind review. I finally find myself writing some stories that are more Silm-focused, and I love this group so I am eager to participate here as a writer.
On the silmarils being baubles: If it was any Feanorian other than Maglor, I would probably agree with you; and I think that in most of his history he would not view them this way. However, after so much violence and loss, I think that Maglor is thinking that even the Silmarils, as glorious as they are, pale in comparison to what they have caused to happen. Maglor is most likely being a little bit deprecating to his people; "look what we've done, and it was for these things that really weren't much compared to the horrors they've caused!" Whether he'd say that out loud I don't know; but it was interesting to make him think it.
That said, I probably haven't thought about the silmarils that much, and maybe with a few more Silmarillion stories under my belt I would have viewed things differently. I know that how I viewed themes and characters/objects in other fandoms has changed as I've written more stories in that fandom and really wrapped my head around the ideas involved.
In any event, thank you for your review, and also for challenging me on my description of the silmarils. You've definitely made me think. :-) -Marta
An interesting glimpse inside Maglor, the gentlest Feanorion and how the Oath must have pursued them through all those years like a curse. The line "...he'd been cursed to live," perfectly sums it up I think.
The scene at Alqualonde with the the Telerin youth was the most "human" moment, perfectly summed up by the line: "Had it really been worth dying for?" Kind of reminds me how our human obsessions seem to "bind our hands".
Thank you, whitewave! I so appreciate the review. My parents work for an international aid organization, and I've heard their stories about people who have survived tsunamis, earthquakes, and the like - I was thinking of them with that "cursed to live" bit, because when everyone around you dies, I think it really can seem like a curse to have to live on, especially if you feel like you're bound by an oath that makes everything you do turn out badly. I'm not talking suicidal or anything... just general grief and despair.
Anyway, thank you for your opinion of my story. :-)
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.