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: Potluck Bingo Sit down to a delicious selection of prompts served on bingo boards, created by the SWG community.
Bingo Cards Wanted for Potluck Bingo Our November-December challenge will be Potluck Bingo, featuring cards created by you! If you'd like to create cards or prompts for cards, we are taking submissions.
Tolkien Meta Week, December 8-14 We will be hosting a Tolkien Meta Week in December, here on the archive and on our Tumblr, for nonfiction fanworks about Tolkien.
New Challenge: Orctober Orcs on a quest for freedom seek a place sheltered and safe from the Dark Lord. Fulfill prompts to gather the clues needed to bring them to freedom.
The majority of the Silmarillion was penned by a single Elf--an Elf who was so thoroughly written out as to appear only through the ways in which their perspective shaped the stories we see. This is their story, the historian's history, the Pennas Pengolodh.
The Exiles of Gondolin come to Sirion. The residents of Sirion welcome them, and friendship blossoms between the last remaining loremaster of Gondolin and a young poet of Sirion.
Fingon returns to Barad Eithel after a late-autumn hunt, finding someone unexpected with his wife. The night takes an even more unexpected turn for all three of them.
Current Challenge
Potluck Bingo
Help yourself to a collection of prompts on bingo boards designed by members and friends of the SWG. Read more ...
A series of articles featuring fan-made maps of all the lands of Arda. Part III explores the island of Númenor and mainland Middle-earth during the Second Age.
A reworking of the 2018 article for Long Live Feedback that includes data from the 2020 Tolkien Fanfiction Survey, pointing to a lack of comments as related to skill, confidence, and community connection.
Part of our Themed Collection series for our newsletter, this collection features fiction, artwork, and essays that transcend the idea of Orcs as the enemy, instead considering their humanity.
Lord of the Rings Secret Santa 2024
LotR SESA has been ongoing for twenty-one years and is running again this year as a prompt meme hosted on AO3 for all genres of Tolkien-based fanfiction.
Kiliel Week 2024
Kiliel Week is a Tumblr event for fanworks about the Kili/Tauriel pairing.
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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.
This is lovely, if bleak, as you said: the increasing lack of humanity in both Earendil and Elwing, and the loneliness of their fates. It's so easy to make the Valar into familiar, human(ish) figures, and thereby diminish them, but you set them at such a remote distance as Powers and that works very well. Earendil and Elwing, somewhere between, seem to take on some of the same pitiless distance. Thank you!
Thank you, I'm glad you thought my writing of the Valar worked, they really are very difficult. And Earendil's fate does seem to me terribly lonely, I really wanted a reason *why* he had to sail the skies and came up with this.
In many ways I'd like to think Earendil's life was happier, but this story just got hold of me, in part because of how bleak Earendil sounds when talking to Elwing in canon just before she choses immortality, and now I find I can't see him any other way, sad though it is.
I really enjoyed this! Bleak is a good description of it, but I can't see how else a mortal Man doomed to eternity could feel. I've always seen Earendil as a tragic figure, wanting to be mortal but remaining out of love. Your picture of him and Elwing growing farther and farther apart is even more sad, but I can see how it could happen. This is a great piece; I don't think I'll ever see Earendil the same way after reading it. Thanks!
Thank you for that. Earendil is a figure who seems unavoidably tragic to me, even though we're not really told how he feels about his fate. His fate does seem lonely, even if the Valar didn't intend it that way (whether Tolkien intended it that way I'm not quite sure)
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.