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.
This is terrific. First encounters make up one of my favorite tropes in almost any genre of literature. But the topic is particularly moving here. I am imagining that the line between the Avari as more of a hunter-gatherer society and The Noldor as the most technologically developed and politically complex of the Eldar might have seemed uncrossable. Yet how fascinating it is to consider that they are both of the Quendi--those who speak, not only with words, but also share the skill of osanwe-kenta. Love their characterizations each of the other.
Thank you, Oshun! I've always found this meeting as a moment of great anthropological (quendilogical?) interest: how these two so different societies -hunter-gatherers versus complex and technologically advanced- met and recognized (or failed to recognize) their common origins and shared history. So glad you found this picture convincing!
Oh, I really liked this, Angelica! It must have been rather a shock for both parties to see how different they were at their meeting. Had it not been for a common enemy, who knows, they might have ended battling each other. And I always loved that U2 song!
Thank you very muchfor your review! It must have been a big shock indeed for everybody. And yes, One is near the top of "My-favourite-songs-ever" list.
This is a wonderfully evocative piece of fiction to go with your theoretical piece on Name-Calling. I'm glad that, although it makes some of the same points very forcefully, this piece has something like a happy-end, as I found the conclusions of the theoretical piece quite sobering and even saddening...
"Quendi and Eldar" caught my attention the first time I read it long before stumbling into fanfiction and that the Eldar confused the Avari with orcs when they first met was always an idea waiting to be explored. And, yes, you're right, this has a happier ending than Name Calling but I think that they must all have felt that though they might be one, they're definitely not the same. Thanks a lot for reviewing!
Thank you for your review! The meeting of Eldar and Avari has always intrigued me and the song fits their mutual feelings perfectly. I'm so glad you enjoyed it!
You've done a great job of conveying the difference between the tribes and of presenting their respective impressions of the other. Very well written :)
Thank you for your review! The meeting of Eldar and Avari has always fascinated me and I seem to keep going back to it. And you're very generous about the writing (*blushes*)
This is a wonderfully evocative piece of fiction to go with Angelica's theoretical piece on "Name-Calling". That piece demonstrates how Tolkien's essay "Quendi and Eldar", while primarily linguistic in intention, shows the elves as preoccupied with differences among themselves rather than unity, to an extent that it would be quite possible to speak of real xenophobia or even racism. I found the conclusions of the theoretical piece quite sobering and even saddening... So I'm glad that this piece, although it makes some of the same points very forcefully, has something like a happy-end: the Avari and the Noldor discover their unity once they actually meet, despite the differences that struck them so forcefully to begin with. Still, it takes a common enemy and danger of death on one side to bring them together, and even in the final scene they remain conscious of the difference in speech--despite their ability to communicate by osanwe. The story is powerfully written. The change of point-of-view is extremely effective. It is striking how strongly these elves each identify as groups rather than as individuals--the pronoun used throughout is "we" and "they" rather than "I" and "she" or "he". But what I also like about this story is its evenhandedness: both sides state their views and neither is too obviously favoured.
Thank you so much for reading! The Avari and their encounter with the returning Noldor have always obsessed interested me. I'm glad that you found this version appealing :D
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.