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.
Oh, this is a wonderful story! I love how it isn't Elros that gets in trouble for not paying attention, as most stories I've read have the twins in the opposing roles. It's especially ironic because of Elrond's later role as a loremaster.
Don’t judge a scholar by his turgid prose. And stop being an arrogant, inconsiderate ass with Macalaurë.”
Thank you. I am so glad you enjoyed it; I had my own logic behind seeing Elrond as the more easily distractable. From teaching school, having kids of my own, and coming from a huge family, my observation has been that the extremely bright kids, who had the most success academically later were often the ones who were most easily bored early on.
I enjoyed reading this. I liked the glimpse into young Elrond's life. You dialogue was a lot of fun, and very clever. I liked seeing Elrond and Elros together as children, and the last lines of this were brilliant. This was very well written and enjoyable to read, a great interpretation of the prompt I think. :-)
Thank you so much for reading and commenting. I’m very happy it worked for you and especially that you liked the dialogue. I love to write dialogue. I also love these characters together; like to imagine what their interactions were like. Elrond and Elros turned out to well for me to think that was pure luck and had nothing to do with their caretakers.
I've read this twice and could not get enough of it. I enjoyed how you fleshed out Elrond's character here and his interaction with the brothers. I would like to think that Elrond being "as kind as summer" much later in life was also derived in part (even a little bit) from the "fell Fëanorians". The twins would have or must have gotten something from spending time with them.
It is also fun to see Elrond in a new, more mischievous light. My favorite was the line: "...do not judge a scholar by his turgid prose, and stop being an arrogant, inconsiderate ass with Macalaurë."
I liked your Maedhros here as well and it just struck me that he would have made a good father if he had kids (and maybe "partly-raising" six younger brothers did the trick).
Elrond the teenager, bored with dry prose and stale history - oh, I'll buy it, it's so very teenage (IIRC).
His shame when he realizes that real people wrote the dry books; that his teacher makes sacrifices so that Elrond may gain the advantage of a good education - this part of your story really touched me and also seemed very much in character. Perhaps this is where Elrond begins to grow up, become the 'kind as summer' loremaster.
And the way he regards Maedhros... there's more than a little hero worship here, which also makes perfect sense. *g*
This is really nice :) I like your neat characterisation and portrayal of young Elrond. Who would have thought a great lord like him could have been so petulant in his youth? Your suggestion of what Maedhros may have done in Tirion was interesting, too. I'd never really thought about it before :)
Thank you so much. I really appreciate the comments. I think Elrond was a survivor, so he must have a strong personality. I think Maedhros and Maglor also must have taken good care for the two of them, because they turned out all right. Actually, case of fostering that amount almost to hostages in a political sense in our own world during the Middle-ages was not uncommon and the bonds that were formed often ended in promoting life-long attachments. So I've never seen the so-called kidnapping of those two youngsters as a horrible fate.
I loved your characterization of everyone in this story, but I thought that Elrond's was especially perfect. And the interaction between Elrond and Maedhros was great!
Thank you so much. That means a lot to me that you like Elrond here. I actually fell in love with Elrond before I even knew his life story--way back when I first read Lord of the Rings. I hope I can write more of him. I also have a fondness for Elrond and Maedhros having a different and oft times more contradictory relationship than that of Maglor and Elrond. But basically in my verse, Elrond admires Maedhros and sees a lot in him that even Maedhros doesn't realize is showing.
Lovely story. Great characterization of Elrond and I love his interaction with Maedhros. For all their faults Maglor and Maedhros must have been good with children--they had so much experience at home. Elrond and Elros certainly did not have good parents--likely credit should go to their foster father's for how the twins turned out!
Thank you so much. I am so happy you enjoyed the story. I really agree with you about Maedhros, Maglor, and the children. I grew up in a family of seven siblings and hoards of cousins and was somewhat shocked to find that in the wider world, it had pretty much made me an expert at how to care for them and keep them happy, not to mention having a very high personal tolerance for the little creatures.
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.