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.
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Bollywood
Prompts this month are films, songs, and tropes from India's dazzling film industry, Bollywood. Read more ...
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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.
Too many things I loved about this piece to list. Here are a few...
Celebrimbor running over the implications and action plan in his mind. Excellent characterisation :D
"I'm going to have to go there and tell them what's happened. Celebrimbor groaned." *Wince* That is not going to be an easy conversation... I feel for him there, I really do!
"He really ought to have been keeping it somewhere more accessible, but when was the last time he had had an accident here?" Hehehe! That's just so true to life, it made me giggle :D
Personally (and I'm being greedy), I'd love to see more of Celebrimbor's thought between: "It does not make any sense..." and "How dare he?". How dare he...what? Of course, your readers (probably) already know, but poor Celebrimbor must be upset - to put it mildly ;P
Now I will go off and wonder what it could be about activated charcoal that breaks the link - a nice touch :D
The little box Celebrimbor has is a rather general purpose box for accidents. The charcoal is more for adsorbing small chemical spills than for dealing with magical hazards. Lead is often used in this world for shielding radioactive materials, so perhaps if a little magic was used on lead it would also work for magical shielding. I'm not sure how well these little boxes actually work to hide the Rings. They can't be used to hide the one ring from Sauron, or Elrond would surely have ordered the One Ring placed in such a contraption during the fellowship's journey. I'm afraid I'm still working this part out as I go along.
I'm glad you enjoyed it and there will hopefully be more fairly soon. Thank you for your feedback; it encourages me to keep working on it.
What an entertaining chapter, just like the one before it! Excellent use of humor -- the lead "isolation boxes' are a funny touch that appeals to this science-geek reader -- as well as the remark that Annatar in owl form was not just hunting rats and mice. :^D Celebrimbor and Elcaran's characters are really well done. You're capturing that feeling many technical types get when something spirals out of control.
I'm glad you're enjoying this. There will be more, but it will probably be written fairly slowly. I'm glad you like the lead isolation boxes - they are a bit of an in joke. Annatar actually did hunt rats and mice (in my version of the story at any rate). He has a tendency to violence which he was trying to keep from coming out at the wrong time. 'Oh dear, I just strangled my apprentice' wouldn't go down very well in Ost-in-Edhil. Or even worse, 'I turned into a werewolf and started attacking Galadriel.'Thank you for the review. I love getting feedback.
Helo Aiwen! I started reading this tonight and I have to say I am enjoying your take on these events. I like your Celebrimbor. The descriptions are well done, and I like the mental turmoil Celebrimbor experiences as he begins to realize something wrong. I also like what he did with the Elven Rings of Power. I like how he was a fast thinker and leapt into action. I look forward to reading more!
I also like Celebrimbor. He made some pretty spectacular mistakes which had dire consequences, but my reading of the rather fragmentary material I can find about the discovery of the one ring suggests to me that when you realized he was wrong he did everything he could think of to fix it. That doesn't make him a diplomat or make everything work out. Things worked out rather badly. On the other hand, imagine if he had tried to hide Annatar's betrayal and the existence of the one ring in order to avoid looking like a fool. Imagine if he had succeeded. Things could have been so much worse. The next chapter will have some fun with him falling over his own feet verbally, as well as more serious things. Thank you for your feedback; it is appreciated.
How can I not enjoy a story with toxic gas bubbles in mines and sketchy rings? Although you've designated this as "drama," I see plenty of humor here, too, but the SWG doesn't have a...what...dramedy? Comic drama, I think. Loves the funny little touches, the Dwarvish citizens trying to chat up Celebrimbor, Celebrimbor squeezing himself into a Dwarf-sized chair, and Durin's opining that the Elves were easily swayed by Morgoth. The rings-as-information-gathering-devices is a cool concept!
I'm glad you're noticing and liking the comic touches. It is something I usually try to do when I write supposedly serious longer stories because it's when things are dark that you most need to laugh - and life is funny.
This has been a great story to read! Thanks so much for posting it :D
I'm putting the review here because one of the bits I really like is the conversation between Galadriel and Celebrimbor. Some excellent characterisation and nice touched of humour! And a Galadriel who can say: "You do realize you've gotten all of us into an unbelievable mess?" certainly gets my vote of approval :D
The 'out-takes' at the end are hillarious - an inspired touch! And - given my own rather iffy experiences with voice recognition software - I'm very impressed you have written this using it!
I'm glad you enjoyed it , and that you found the out takes funny. I have problems with my hands - tendonitis and other stuff - so without voice dictation I probably wouldn't be writing these stories.
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.