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
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 ...
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.
I loved this, Oshun. This is your Maedhros and Maglor, I think, and this does read to me like something from your verse. Elrond is a gem in this, bird-bright and audacious. There is humour, but there's sadness like a continuous background note in Maedhros which really pulls my heartstrings. What a smashing gift for your Slashy Valentine recipient.
Thanks again! I hope I don't get carried away, but I am thinking a sequel in the POV of Elrond. It would be fun to try the completely different voice. Plus, I'm dying to tell people what he saw when he looked at Maglor and Maedhros--I've only done that in what I call cute-'lil-elfing fics to date.
Oh this was delicious! You managed to put all my doubts about this particular pairing to rest, in way that was both humorous and emotionally effecting.
Thank you so much! I am so happy you enjoyed it. I love Fingon and Maedhros, so it was some work for me to make it fit into my head in a way that would not offend me. I had less trouble once I started thinking about it with the age and foster father problem. I worried more about Fingon! It was fun. Thanks again.
What a beautiful story! Elrond was wonderful in this - bright, sensual and full of life. Maedhros was, as your Maedhros always is, magnificent. It seems to be a very light hearted story but there is a very sad undertone to it. Thank you for sharing this piece. Also, I am sure this incident left a positive impact on Elrond's life:)
You are so incedibly kind! Comments like this make all the hard work of writing these stories seem worthwhile. I am so glad you were able to appreciate the light and shadows in the story. It was very important to me to convey both.
So, things I like about this: all the thought you put into the setting and the background, both the general situation, how you sketch in the near-normal but not really normal character of the village and the near-normal but not really normal upbringing of the twins, and lots of small touches and details dotted all over, but especially in the first half: Maedhros responsible for sewage (I'd suspect an allusion but the theme has been cropping up all over the place after all!), sarcastic remarks about Turgon and Luthien and so on, the parody of Barbara Allen aka Sweet Lindir, etc.
I also like how you've shown what a complicated decision process for Maedhros this is, under the circumstances. Even when he's made up his mind, he still hasn't quite made up his mind, so to speak, and he's got his hesitations and doubts right until the end, as of course he would.
Elrond, of course, is special, despite being so ridiculously young! I suspect that at the end of the story he is about to become very, very angry, despite his relatively philosophical attitude... You said you were going to write a sequel from his POV, weren't you?
Well, to sum up: I liked both the funny bits, some of which are very funny, and the sad bits, some of which are very sad indeed. I liked the whole thing, and I think you did a sterling job with a very tricky subject.
Thank you so much! I actually had thought enough about the characters over the years that I was lucky to be apply that to a one-month deadline. The thing I hate about fic swaps is the requirement to invent a world and backstory for various characters in a few short weeks. Anyway, having that in my head made it a little easier to write.
The hard part was trying to imagine my Maedhros in-character making such a choice. I surprised myself that I could believe it. You are right. Elrond will be angry and yet Maedhros is also right, it's better to love and be loved, even if it is not the lifelong, earthshaking one that one hopes it will be, than not to love at all.
I am so happy you were able to enjoy it. I think one's hardest audience is always the writer who writes the same major characters. Thank you again for your kind words!!
I'm not sure exactly how I missed this story when I archive cralled through your work, but I'm glad I found it now. I was actually looking for this paring specifically, but the only other fic I found was an abuse fic that I had read a long time ago. Do you know of any others our there?
Anyway, I loved the pacing of the romance between them. As usual, you had some great one liners in there, too, and I absolutely adored the bit with Maglor intentionally singing badly.
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.