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.
Subscribe to the SWG Newsletter
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.
Wow! You did it! You really had your sailors circumnavigate the globe!
The jewel strewn beach, the freaky weird Hall of Fui (Someone had taken bats’ wings and attached them to the cave roof. :D ), the sneaking suspicion that the Valar might not be omniscient after all...
Wow what an adventure! I'm wondering if the Valar did know they were there or if they were allowed to enter on purpose. I like how you fleshed out the elusive Númenoreans.
I intentionally left it vague, whether the Valar knew they were there. Whether they knew or didn't know, it opens up a whole lot of other questions. ;)
Oh what a magnificent fic, it felt like a short movie that I was able to see through your male characters eyes. The ponderings, the rocking of the boat, the excitement to go ashore, but also the missing of his wife. Then I already had an inkling of an idea that they must have stumbled upon something which has Nienna's mark and just the whole conversation that followed, the not willing to speak out that they might have violated the ban (that reminded me of sailors or pirates who were so superstitious that even speaking a name of a curse might bring it upon them). The last line is just precious, I think if they noticed it, they would have been pleased by the respect they showed and that they left as soon as possible so that none else would find out that whoops, one can sail east hehe.
This is fantastic. I absolutely love the story of their circumnavigation; it's so very well done. You manage accomplish a great deal in a relatively short piece. I do have the sense that they've travelled a very long ways, seen many unusual things and met many different peoples. I also can sense the excitement from the adventure and discoveries they made as well as the feeling of uncertainty that would have accomplished such a voyage.
Also, I love it that the ban does not account for sailing East rather than West (I assume that it does not account for the fact that Man or a man might have known it was a round world.) and/or that the Valar simply might not have known. Brilliant.
Thanks so much! Yep, I left it intentionally vague, whether the Valar even realized they were there - whether they did or not leads to other, not entirely comfortable questions.
You used the bat-wing cave! I totally squeed when I saw that! I really liked this--not only the heretical intriguing use of details from the texts but the writing is superb; it is very suspenseful and chilling in all the right places. 2000 words passed way too quickly! :)
I read your story last night and I just wanted to say I thought it was such an original topic, with so many questions to explore in it, and you did a marvelous job with it. I loved your naturalist, Cullasso, (Maturin was my favorite character too!) and how glimpses of his life show within the fabric of the story at hand. The whole situation you set up was a fabulous topic of exploration. Thanks for such a great story!
I followed the discussion thread that spawned (or encouraged?) this concept. I was so delighted to see you actually wrote it. If the incorporation of geekish canon elements (combined with heresy) weren’t enough to hook me, you adding all of the wonderful nods to Patrick O’Brian would surely have finished the job. (I’m a huge fan of his, sea stories in general and C. S. Forester as well.) I loved the part of Cullasso gathering up his sketch book and his broad-brimmed straw hat (that elf, of course, will forever resemble my image of Stephen Maturin—who, over time, has grown to look a great deal like Paul Bettany in my mind--very nice piece of casting IMHO). I adored the references to medicine and the scientific method. Anyone who knows me can tell you that I am pretty ignorant about hard science, but I do adore popularizations. Thanks so much for sharing this story. It pushed all my buttons.
I'll confess I haven't read O'Brian's books, but the movie adaptation of Master and Commander was vastly entertaining, and Maturin was my favorite character in the movie. :)
That discussion thread was more encouragement than anything - when I first read the Silmarillion, my thirteen year old self didn't quite figure out that the world was flat and thought that the wording of the Ban was silly, because the Numenoreans could sail east and make it to Valinor. I mentioned the notion offhand to Pandemonium, and then on that one LJ thread - and then I just had to write it.
I love this. I adore round earth tales, and don't think there's enough of them. I also love the bits of science you wove in-- too many people forget Middle-earth is our world.
And then another thought had occurred to Cullasso, another notion for which neither man had an answer. “Do you think the Valar even noticed that we were there?”
*snickers* This is my favorite line. I think that if they did, they were amused that someone managed to figure out the loophole and glad they didn't stay.
I can't tell you how thrilled I am to see this heresy come to fruition and furthermore, how it sets a foundation -- carved in smooth basalt -- for more tales which I dearly hope to see. I have fallen hard and fast for your Middle-earth equivalents of Aubrey and Maturin (such a natural fit) and the historical underpinnings for Dol Amroth and -- most intriguingly -- Umbar.
The sly nods to BoLTI are fantastic, e.g., the abandoned caves (and concepts) of Ve Mandos and Fui Nienna, as are the beach of jasper stone and the salty rain, both, well, odd. And the animals of every kind. Heh. That should be a tip-off, Cullasso!
Love the tie-ins to your 'verse!
...the notes taken by Tar-Aldarion’s naturalist.
I'm hoping Gandalf's Apprentice and I can bring this naturalist to life later this year. Stay tuned for more heresy! :^)
Tolkien knew that his later writings on the round earth concept (which, as you well know, I embrace) would require reconfiguration of his mythology. He didn't pursue this extensively, but the essays in "Myths Transformed" provide fertile ground for the imaginative fan fic writer to address the consequences of an earth that is, in an imaginary sense, our own. You have taken this concept and planted your creativity into it like Captain Hendinaer planted the laurinquë tree in Umbar. May this story arc with M-e's history (with the Steel spin :^D), and its characters flourish just as much as the tree did! Oh, and speaking of the laurinquë tree, what a cool concept as a defiant symbolic counterpoint to Gondor's White Tree. >:^)
The rather cool thing on the basalt and the jasper beach - there are natural formations like that in the real world. With basalt pillars, the Giant's Causeway off the coast of Northern Ireland springs to mind, and there's a real beach that's very heavy on jasper stones just outside of Machias, Maine.
The laurinquë - apparently many Numenoreans thought they were derived from Laurelin just as the White Tree was from Telperion (which I suspect you knew), so yep, that'd be a rather cool 'official' emblem of Umbar, wouldn't it? >;)
This was so much fun to write that I can't even tell you, and I'm so glad you enjoyed this!
When I first read the Silm at around age 13, I didn't quite catch that the world was supposed to be flat. So my younger brattier self was puzzled by the Ban on sailing West from Numenor - silly Valar, all the Numenoreans would have to do is sail East! Nearly 30 years later, after bouncing ideas off of Pandemonium (and having her encourage the heresy), this emerged.
This was brilliant! :D The describtion of Aman is fantastic - very alien and exotic. But also the characters and of course the round earth. I've always had trouble imagining middle-earth as actually having been flat because it's is...well, just imagine what those Numenorean explorers would encounter then! The actual edge of the world. Which works in Pratchett's work, but is harder to imagine with less comical, more realistic characters and cultures. This was wonderfully done.
When I first read the Silmarillion in junior high school, I didn't quite catch the fact that the world was supposed to be flat, and I thought the ban on sailing west from Numenor made zero sense - because everyone knows that they could've just sailed east! I was really delighted when I found canon justification for a round world in 'Myths Transformed,' and knew I had to write this. I'm really glad you liked it!
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.