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 ...
Turgon's Rock Opera
On the anniversary of the publication of "The Silmarillion," we’re reflecting on the importance of music in Arda with prompts that come from rock songs. 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.
Oh Oshun, this is love, love, love!! You do such a fantastic job of world-building even in a short fic like this, so that I feel I've lifted a curtain on a real place. And real people as well. I feel as if I truly know both your Glorfindel and your Ecthelion. These are such boys too, the teasing is perfect. “Do you realize how lucky you are that I have decided to sleep with you?” and
“I love you with all my heart, Laurefindil,” I said. “I don’t mind how homely you are or who knows either.”
Really enjoyed this exchange for writerly sophistication:
I’m really sorry. I think the problem is at least partially the saddle itself. It feels as hard as wood. My rear end feels bruised. Would you mind terribly looking at it? I might consider trying to find some way to pad it a bit.”
“You’re serious?” I asked him. “You really do want me to look at your arse?”
His face flushed a fiery red and his eyes narrowed. “Actually I meant for you to examine the saddle.
The reason I loved it was that as reader I understood that Glorfindel meant he wanted Ecthelion to look at the saddle, but it's such good characterization about what was uppermost in E's mind that he mistook what Fin meant.
And I loved this: “This is perfect. We are perfect,” he whispered. “I knew we would be.”
I'm reminded a bit of scenes in Call Me by Your Name and At Swim, Two Boys, just for the sense of being immersed in that world of youth and first times in a beautiful place by the sea. (Loved the pics.) I would gladly read a whole novel like this.
And of course, I was happy about the ending. It's marvelous as always.
Thank you so much! You knocked my sock off with this review. I know it still has plenty of warts. You could make me lazy. Oh, but please don't stop. I'll take that chance.
This is (I think) a little unusual for one of your stories in that you tend to be a world builder and most of your stories are compatible with each other - set in the same universe, I mean. This one isn't compatible with Harmony in Autumn (unless Ecthelion should happen to be a compulsive liar). But I think it beautifully complements that story - it is the boisterous spring to its harmonious autumn, so to speak, and you have chosen to describe young, adolescent love here rather than belated love.
Although actually the description of the setting sounds very summery and warm rather than spring-like - like the best kind of holiday! (Strictly speaking, it can't be summer, I guess, there being no real seasons this close to the Trees, but you actually address that problem in the story, don't you?)
Only an incorrigible addict like myself would remark on the fact that there is no glimpse of Fingon in this one - I suppose he had to go to Fingolfin's reception and let himself be bored stiff, poor guy!
In case it isn't obvious from the above - I really enjoyed reading the story!
You are lovely to spot that it is incompatible with my world. I don't know which is canon for me at this point--this one or Harmony in Autum. I am always in love with the last story I wrote. I unfortunately got the same request more or less for two fic swaps. I never would have written either of these stories without a prompt. Not that I do not love Glorfindel/Ecthelion; I always have. They are for no reason but personal perference a canon fixture for me. It is true that Fingon does not appear and he almost always does. But I did mention both Maedhros and Fingon--that Ecthelion has legs almost as long as those of Maedhros and that Glofindel's brother is an equestrian on the level of Fingon.
Thanks for reading. I had so much fun writing young love.
I do intend to stick to my practice of writing within my own canon, unless forced by an outside element to do otherwise.
I am honored (not to mention tickled pink) to have this thoroughly charming story dedicated to my birthday! You have painted such a vivid picture of those halcyon days in Aman. The details of the North Village and the cottage itself are wonderfully executed so that I could visualize them easily (although the photos helped). The tidbits of culture are very neat, too.
I love Ecthelion and Glorfindel's characterizations. Ecthelion's mixed Telerin-Noldorin ancestry is a neat touch and gives you a nifty springboard for cultural observation. The superstition of the villagers ("Don't mention Melkor!) tickled me.
Each fellow comes across believably as a young man with that certainty about his knowledge of life, but naive and vulnerable at the same time. I like the way you build up the sexual tension with the two guys dancing around one another, with Laurefindel seemingly oblivious to Ecthelion's interest, when in fact, he is well aware of it. That's handled very well. Glorfindel's prowess as a mathematician also thrilled me. Nice researching there -- that comes across as very authoritative! The intelligence of each character shines, and that really does it for me, probably more than a very explicit erotic scene. And speaking of the erotic, I like how you handled it here -- just right.
I have always liked the Ecthelion/Glorfindel pairing, and you've done a fantastic job here. A round of applause, please...
Thank you! I am so glad those parts worked for you. I did get in a bit of a hurry and, despite the valiant efforts of Lilith and Ignoblebard to rein me in and whip me into shape, it still could use some nitpicking, but I did enjoy taking them on and building a life for them and giving them some personalities.
I had a little trepidation about the dedication because it did feel still a little rough to me. But I was thinking of you and your Glorfindel when I wrote it and it was your birthday after all! I could not resist.
Gah, how is it I forgot to review this here?
Blame my schedule. I LOVE THIS FICTION!
LOVE IT!
Why? Well, because it rocks!
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