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
Naturalist's Guide to Middle-earth
Sneak a peek into notebooks of the scholars and explorers of Middle-earth, with prompts that are images from historical naturalist publication. 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.
Love the title. Love it every time I see it used. It always takes me back to Homer. It is absolutely perfect for this story with its imagery of the grapes and bloodshed and its relationship to the sea.
Also love your interpretation of how Feanor would have convinced his sons that this was the only thing, the right thing, to be done. Very happy to see you writing a story featured Maedhros again. I think the first one I ever read was one of yours.
I love the title, too. And the title is what gave me the imagery I needed to finally write the story. (I\'ve been struggling with this scene for six years now. I owe Homer a big debt!)\r\n\r\nAnd I\'m hoping Maedhros and his brothers decide to stick around for a while. I\'ve missed writing them; they have such wonderful, messy family dynamics.
Powerful. Just as the 'dance' seemed fun in the beginning, the decision to take the ships seemed so reasonable at first - they *needed* them, there wasn't a choice, etc. But it will be difficult for Maedhros to wash these stains away.
You\'re quite welcome! I\'m glad you enjoyed the story. I\'ve been struggling with trying to portray the Kinslaying for six years now; it took that long to get the imagery right.
I like the parallels between the wine and blood a lot--the images you conjure are so vivid for me. You wrote a very convincing Fëanor as well. Looking forward to reading more of your Maedhros/Fëanorians.
I\'m glad you enjoyed the story. I\'d been hopelessly stuck on this fic for years until suddenly that final image popped into my head, and then I knew how to write it.\r\n\r\nI\'m hoping over time to get all my older stories posted up here, as well as some new ones. Maglor\'s whispering in my ear at the moment...
Oh I love this, love the imagery you use. I like that you have Maitimo remembering the battle as a series of almost disconnected scenes as I think thats often how it seems in life when you are involved in a situation with stress, adrenaline and a lot of action and you try to remember the events afterwards. It makes the battle seem very real.
Anyway, I'm babbling, hope to read more of your work soon!
I\'m glad you liked the story. Once I had that imagery in my head, I just knew I had to write it.\r\n\r\nI\'ve written a lot of Silmarllion fanfics (many featuring Maedhros), which are posted elsewhere, and which I hope to move over here in time. I\'ve also got a few more plotbunnies hanging about, so with luck you\'ll be seeing mor new stuff from me in the future as well!
What a wonderful short story, I love the emotions you evoke here, especially with the innocence lost as a child and later on as an adult elf. There is no right or wrong here and you show so well how unpredictable life can be with its twists and u-turns.
This sentence stood out for me, especially as to where it appears in the fic:
And so began our Fall.
I think to me that is the turning point that everyone will realise one day, that when the innocence is gone, old age and death will be on our doorstep before we know it. This fic also ties in beautifully withthe professors view on Downfall, as he expressed in one of his letters (don't have the book with me, sadly enough). Great fic!
I\'m glad you liked the story so much! The parallels between the child\'s loss of innocence (and guilt over a \"crime\" which was no crime) and the adult Maedhros\'s later loss of innocence (and guilt over his participation in a genuine atrocity) was something I was hoping readers would pick up on. Tolkien seems to view the Kinslaying as the Noldor\'s Fall from Grace, and it certainly was for Maedhros. He\'s done something there\'s really no way to atone for.\r\n\r\nI do think there\'s some wrong here (before the Kinslaying happens, that is). Feanor\'s not being entirely truthful in his arguments. The real reason they can\'t just pause to build ships of their own is that at this point, the Noldor are functioning as a mob; if they\'re given time to stop and think and cool off, Feanor senses that a lot of them will turn around and go home. He\'s not about to allow that to happen, so he uses dishonest and emotionally manipulative rhetoric on his sons to convince them to ignore their misgivings and go along with his plan - with horrific results for everyone.
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.