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.
SQUEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!! "flails and screeches like a rabid fan girl"
You have no idea how much I absolutely love this, Steel! I was ecstatic to see you continue your idea with Pharazon and Miriel that you established in "Alliance". I loved that story so much. I love the idea that the Faithful are the ones who made the story that Pharazon forced her, seems very plausible to me, especially to protect Elentir's pride. I was very happy to see how you portray Miril as a strong Queen, and woman, that really she sets the campagin to Middle earth in motion.
I really really like that you show how that Miriel and Pharazon felt opression from both the Faithful AND the King's Men. One wanted to make her a figurehead, as you said, and the other wanted her dead. Loved this. Adore your inspirations from Carthage for Umbar. So is this how isildur meets Zamin? :-)
I was very much looking forward to this story and it both met, and exceeded expectation. Thank you so much for writing this! I loved reading it! I'm adding this to my story favorites.
Thanks so very much, Roisin - I'd read enough stories in which Pharazon was a sadistic megalomaniac and Miriel was browbeaten and the Faithful were saintly, and I wanted to do a very different take on it. Imagine my squeefulness when I realized that HoMe XII provided me with a canon passage to back me up?
Yep, this would be how Isildur ends up meeting Zamin. ;)
I don't even know where to start with what I love about this. First, I suppose, that you chose to write from Ar-Pharazôn's perspective, and without turning him into the usual megalomaniac bastard. (And just after I ranted in chat how much I was annoyed by the frequent clear-cut division between pure, perfect Faithful and evil King('s men) yesterday, too!) Seeing events from his side is very interesting.
Second, un-cowed Míriel. Even with the short page-time she gets here, you make it quite clear that she's neither a mere victim of her cousin's lust nor resigned to a shadow nor hating him. I quite like the thought. The biased chronicler of the Silmarillion would doubtlessly style her a saint who would never have loved Pharazôn of her own will, but that doesn't mean it's true... ;)
Third, un-perfect Amandil. Not that I hate the guy; I just can't believe that he was the perfectly meek, kind, gentle, poor unloved Faithful he's occasionally styled to be. Your version was very believable. And Sauron mistaking him for the King at first was priceless! (That scene was over way too quickly!)
Well, and all the small things. The description of Umbar and its workings was fascinating, and the allusions to Pharazôn's height (or lack thereof) were highly entertaining. And I liked the frequent italics in Pharazôn's thought. I could practically hear his voice!
Thanks very much, Lyra - I'd actually attempted to write this whole thing several times from different POVs, and it just didn't feel right until I crawled into Pharazon's head. I've been sort of curious on other perspectives of the 'histories' we're presented really ever since I read the Silm for the first time - it was right around then that I realized that the history books taught one thing about the Mexican-American War in the 1840s, but the Mexican people themselves had a very different take on things (my Spanish teachers didn't like the history books very much). That made me sort of look at the Silm and say 'but what would Pharazon say?' or for that matter at LOTR and ask 'but were the Southrons really that evil?'
Absolutely wonderful! It was fantastic to see Pharazon in his element, so competent and confident and ruthless if he has to be. This story was interesting in many levels, but I particularly enjoyed the other take on his marriage at work, as well as the view on the situation with the Faithful from the other side. I also loved to finally get a peek at that conversation between P and Sauron, when S surrenders to him. What a credible, believable, intriguing, convincing job you've done in bringing this tiugh campaign to life. Thanks for a wonderful story!
I love that Pharazôn *doesn't* want war, for as he aptly points out here, he has problems enough at home. I appreciate your nod to the fact that it was the Faithful who wrote the "Akallabêth" and the biases they held.
I adore the play you make with the title with Elendil's sons as hostages, in addition to Sauron.
I snickered when Sauron addressed Amandil first.
“And how do I know that an offer of aid to my citizens will not ultimately lead to an invasion?” I asked.
*whistles innocently* Well, it wasn't an invasion of Númenor…
Ah, Pharazôn-- I now must wonder what Amandil would have done, and if you would have had the gumption to do it if Sauron had begun helping you by then.
Thank you, Indy! As I think I've said elsewhere, realizing at a reasonably young age that the people who win a war write the history books (or in the case of the Akallabeth, the ones who survived to found new realms in the north) made me wonder what story the other side might tell. It's been a great deal of fun exploring the possibilities, and I'm glad you enjoyed it!
And I'm gratified you picked up on the extra meaning of 'hostage.' Heee.
What I love about your stories, and this one is no exception, is that you don't follow that sort of 'mainstream' in f-fiction, which portrays the chacterters like old western movies do: the bad are clad in black, and the good -- in white. No, no, no. The Faithful aren't saints here, and the bad aren't monsters.
The last lines are perfect, both as a conclusion and foreboding.
Thank you very much, Robinka! I'll confess I'm not fond of flat characterization, whether of 'heroes' or 'villains.' Real life is more ocmplex, and I like my characters that way, too.
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.