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.
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.
[Writing] No Time Have I by Flora-lass
A Silmarillion acrostic.
[Writing] I called it Fate that I should fail by AdmirableMonster
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…
[Writing] All of you by chrissystriped
Elrond and Celebrían celebrate their anniversary with their family.
[Writing] Lament for the Singer by daughterofshadows
A short thing about Maglor, death and grieving.
[Writing] Cosmological Poems of Arda by AaronAzrael
I would like to share my revelations of Tolkien's Universe in the form of narrative and emotional poems.
[Writing] Eä's Redemption by AaronAzrael
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…
[Artwork] Map of Valinor by Aprilertuile
My newly drawn map of Aman, as complete as I could make it.
Bollywood
Prompts this month are films, songs, and tropes from India's dazzling film industry, Bollywood. Read more ...
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 ...
Fandom Chocolate … or Authors Love Comments by Dawn Walls-Thumma
[]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.
Passing Ships by Simon J. Cook
[]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.
Fanfiction and the Serious Business of Writer's Craft by Dawn Walls-Thumma
[]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.
[Writing] Staging a Battle by StarSpray
[]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.
[Writing] From whose bourn no traveller returns by losselen
[]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.
[Writing] Sand Sorcery by StarSpray
[]It is well known that Psamathos does not leave his cove. He does not like to get his feet wet, and prefers to spend his days dozing under the sun.
Fellowship of the Fics: Summer Stories 2024
Fellowship of the Fics offers four weeks of summer-themed prompts during the month of July.
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.
July 2024 Call for Papers and Proposals
Conferences and publications that have open calls for papers and proposals in July 2024.
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.
Copying most of my SV review. Funny story. Just so entertaining.
I absolutely adore Finrod and simultaneously I cannot resist poking fun at him. Really? Counseling young Oropher about selling weed?
I really enjoyed the stuff with him and Galadriel:
“I see you’ve picked up another pretty boy. What would Amarië have to say about that?”
“What she always said on the subject,” Finrod said mildly. “But then she could have come with us to Endórë and instead chose to stay behind and miss all the fun crossing the Helcaraxë. You and I have been over this endlessly and I fear I cannot undo what’s been done. In any case, your assumption is invalid. Young Oropher is merely assisting me with the investigation.”
“Assisting, is that what you’re calling it now,” she sniffed.
And what a yummy Celeborn:
Celeborn was nearly as handsome as Finrod, but his features were less delicately hawkish and more ruggedly chiseled. He was tall with that plaited silver-white hair, and tarn-blue eyes under low-riding dark brows.
Finrod makes an utterly perfect Sherlock Holmes. How in the world did you ever come up with the idea for this? Greatly enjoyed the quotations at the beginnings of the chapters. I used to know my Sherlock Holmes really well, but it has been decades. God I am so old!
“I wondered about that,” Finrod said. “She sometimes seems to have an uncanny ability to see the future, but often can’t see something right under her own nose.”
I hooted at Melian here. This is funny.
I just knew that Galadriel and Celeborn had to be connected to the mystery in some way. But the final twist was beyond anything I might have guessed.
You do pick labor-intense projects to be done to a tight deadline. I was racing through this to find the plot dénouement and although I am quite conversant with Darth’s work, I only spotted a couple of things, so it looks like I will have to re-read when I am not so distracted by all the new stories available at one time.
Great story!
Thanks again, Oshun for your review here and on SS. I'm so pleased you enjoyed it. Especially glad you liked the characterizations. I had a lot of fun with them, particularly the Finrod/Sherlock Oropher/Watson characterizations. I'm now wondering if it wouldn't be fun to do a couple more with the two of them?
This one made me laugh so much - the kind of laughter that warms you from the inside out when you're sitting up far too late into the night to read the story right through to the end and your toes are getting cold...
Hi Himring, what a lovely thing to say! Thank you so much. I couldn't ask for a better reaction than that. And I hope your toes are warm again. lol.
*Applauds*
OMG, what a rollicking adventure of a romp, 'Scribe! I thoroughly, completely, absolutely enjoyed this wonderful story, with its zippy plot, clever banter, lush descriptions, and spicy humor. Plenty of LOL moments there.
The characterizations of Finrod as Holmes and Oropher as Watson are just perfect, and the supporting cast from the wilted beauties of Menegroth who entice Oropher to the King and Queen to Finrod's bossy sister and her silver-tree BF, Ka and especially Fangorn. What a hoom, ha, hoot and a half to find the old Ent (without wood - ah hahahahahaha!) in the story. I know I detected a nod to Darth's canon of copper as Ainur repellant, but was Oropher's natty bee costume a sly wink at "Bee-Elves?"
The Magical Codpiece. That sent me over the edge. Well, many quips did.
What is it about Darth's prompts that inspire creativity? :^) These surely did. Brava, Elfscribe! Brava!
I'm thrilled to death that you liked it, a279;Pandë. This was a departure for me in a number of ways. I've never tried a detective/mystery type story, certainly not with so many, um, non-traditional approaches to canon. I don't normally write humor, nor do I normally have as many het couples, both of which I enjoyed. I actually sat down and developed a detailed outline before writing, since with a mystery, you have to figure out the end and then plot it backwards, an approach also somewhat different from my usual modus operandi. I'm especially glad you liked Fangorn (not to mention Fimbrethil), although there is something sort of sacrilegious about ent sex, even off-camera. And yes, the bee references, and there are many in this fic, were a nod to Darth's Bee-Elves. I knew this was for Darth from the minute I saw the prompts, so figured I'd better get creative, although I can't hope to match his wit.
Russandol was a huge help, not only with an incisive beta, including getting me to push Finrod's Sherlockiness, but also in bouncing ideas around, such as how the Codpiece/Girdle connection worked. At one point she made me laugh when she said she was going to take my first e-mail -- in which I told her not to let me exceed 20 pages on this -- and frame it. I'm all for joint efforts on fics in future.
My MEFA 2011 review:
I'm amazed by the wildly original plot and the clever characterisation in this outstanding piece. Elfscribe has crafted a dazzling plot full of surprises and twists, in the best tradition of good thriller stories, and characterisation which carefully preserves the spirit of the Silmarillion while adding to the two main characters (a charmingly naive Oropher and a cunning Finrod) a few traits from those of the very familiar Sherlock Holmes duo.
Add to that a wonderful romantic relationship (including oodles of UST), peculiar Doriathren fashion, plus a fantastic cast of other characters like Thingol, Melian, Celeborn and Galadriel, not forgetting a couple of ents with, er, marital problems and a crowd of highly frustrated elves, all endangered by a strange shift in the normal cycle of the seasons. Mixing all of those ingredients, elfscribe has crafted a truly polished story which grips you from the beginning and carries you through a whirlwind of mystery, action and humour set in a wonderful vision of Doriath crammed with a wealth of details that truly brings it to life.
So, even if Sherlock Holmes is not your thing, if you want to read something different in this fandom, you will certainly enjoy this!
Thanks so much Russa, for everything. Hugs!
What a great light hearted story! Even before I started reading this I knew you must love Sherlock Holmes. Finrod is an entertaining and very believable “Sherlock”. Oropher is charming. This is a very different Oropher from others I have read and I love him young, sweet, and charmingly just a bit awkward. Very much enjoying this. Thank you for writing and sharing as always.
Thank you Lisse. I am quite fond of Sherlock Holmes, all versions, but most particularly the recent series with *sigh* Benedict Cumberbatch. I'm so excited that he's going to play the Necromancer and Smaug's voice in The Hobbit. I never thought much about Finrod or Oropher before writing this, and I'd not read too many stories with either of them, although I am aware that Oropher has often been portrayed as the villain. I did enjoy making Finrod into Sherlock Holmes and was surprised at how well it worked. That's the beauty of swaps where you get an assignment. I've written several stories that way that I'd never have thought of if not for the assignment. It really stretches the imaginative muscles. This was such an unlikely story, but I enjoyed writing it a great deal, so I'm glad you enjoyed reading it.
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