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.
I like this event from Maglor's pov and I especially like his interaction with Uinen. Her description and characterization works well. You have a vivid set of images both of the path of destruction of the wave and the newly-formed cataract of the seas. What a cataclysmic event.
Thanks so much for the review :) What I liked most about taking part in the last B2MeMonth was the way these really unlikely ideas popped up out of nowhere. I've never given Uinen any thought before, she's just been a name, but now there's an entire backstory looking to find its way out. I think a lot of the descriptions were based on half remembered television footage of tsunami aftermath, but there was also my childhood nightmare of a huge wave coming up over Cape Town.... must have been rather like that in Numenor, for sure.
Ohhhh...I love this. It's haunting, evoking images of the tsunamis we've seen lately, and the destruction left behind. I love the idea of Uinen coming to Maglor, and of him giving the Silmaril to her (not Ulmo). The detail of him never singing a note on a beach was great! It just smacked of Maglor to me. She's perfect; not quite easy to understand, but still manages to get her image home.
And then, her voice drifting in and out with the ebb and flow of the waves, almost drowned by the shrilling of the gulls, she told him who.
And why.
Perfect! I can hear it, see it, and smell it. Ah, lovely as always, even through the sadness.
Thank you, dearest, there's no better compliment than your last line :) This was a strange one, nothing to do with the Maglor ficlets I was trying to write at the time, but it was just 'there' as was her voice, I could really hear her .... high pitched, creepy-strange, blending with the ebb-flow sound of the sea. Maglor was just Maglor - he doesn't show up often so when he does I really enjoy spending time with him.
Maglor here, for me, is still a prince, even if his life is that of a vagabond. Who else would have a "chat" with a Maia? The description of that shore and the sea is so vivid, I could actually see the scene in my mind. But the strongest part for me is the end, because of it's minimalism:
She told him who. And why.
It sounds so ominous, so final, and it evokes the feeling of "no return, no hope" so much like the fate of the Elves in Middle-earth. It's the story of the Elves, even if it's not.
Hey Scarlet :) Thank you, and I'm delighted the descriptions worked so well for you. Maglor for me is always a prince, no matter what circumstances overtake him. And an artist, so in tune with the natural world and open to conversations with unlikely beings. I loved the thought of them having some kind of special connection due to the Silmaril, and choosing who to give it to struck me as very Maglor.
This view of Maglor is really interesting, and the relationship with Uinen - I have not thought of that before, that he denied Ulmo and of course the Valar too that way. I like that idea. I don't think they would have let the Valar have the Silmarils at any cost.
That final glimpse of her standing there and then not is like the sea coming in- lovely image and rather sad to think of Maglor left behnd and never going home.
I'm not sure where this idea came from, but it made a lot of sense as it unfolded. I really could not see him tamely tossing that Silmaril to Ulmo and then wandering off to live a life of misery, not Maglor as I picture him. Uinen is someone I would love to write again, but I haven't found a space for her yet. I'm glad you enjoyed her.
I really like the idea of Maglor and Uinen being....not friends, but friendly. I like that he goes to her for information, too. The way she speaks is intriguing, too, and makes this seem very vivid.
I liked this line a lot (possibly just because I like contrary people, haha):
"He’d heard the stories of Fëanor’s second born bewailing his loss in song as he walked the shores of Middle-earth, so on principle he never sang a note on a beach."
The ending was interesting, too. The kind of vagueness and the lack of Maglor's response to it made it seem all the more eerie, I thought.
Why, thank you so much for reading. What a lovely review :) I'm glad you enjoyed Uinen, she's rather special, and also that you liked Maglor's contrariness about singing on beaches - I can see him being very unimpressed with that particular rumour about him, lol.
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.