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.
Even with your presence over there now, I'm glad you found it interesting enough to comment here. Thank you very much! It's a fun project and I was hoping these articles (articlets?) would attract a little interest. :)
As you know, I have followed you onto Tumblr now--but the place bewilders me rather, so I'm still glad that you are also posting these pieces here where it's possible to keep track of them properly!
Thank you very much. Tumblr can be bewildering, and it's definitely not the best place for easy accessibility, so it seemed appropriate to post them here as well - especially since Dawn mentioned that there was a shortage of meta posts in the archive proper. I'm glad you think these are worth tracking. :)
I am happy to see that you are posting these here! Thank you for sharing them.
One the absolutely most appalling and horrifying example for me of slaves of Morgoth comes from this passage from the account of the Battle of Unnumbered Tears:
Then the Captain of Morgoth sent out riders with tokens of parley, and they rode up before the outworks of the Barad Eithel. With them they brought Gelmir son of Guilin, that lord of Nargothrond whom they had captured in the Bragollach; and they had blinded him. Then the heralds of Angband showed him forth, crying: ‘We have many more such at home, but you must make haste if you would find them; for we shall deal with them all when we return even so.’ And they hewed off Gelmir’s hands and feet, and his head last, within sight of the Elves, and left him."The Silmarillion, "Of the Fifth Battle: Nirnaeth Arnoediad"
The incident, of course, cause a break in the ranks and preemptory assault on Morgoth's forces which resulted in great loss of lives. The implication also is, which is backed in other locations, that there were a lot of captives in Angband talen during the Battle of Sudden Flames.
I agree that that was one of the most horrific incidents, and it does show how widespread captivity (I made a distinction between that and slavery, although there likely was a great deal of intersection between the two unless the captives were spared for some purpose, e.g. Maedhros, Finrod, Húrin) was in Beleriand. The wakes of the Bragollach and Nirnaeth are mentioned in the original article, but the quotation certainly drives the idea home on a personal level. Thank you for commenting, again.
Thank you! A review from the Queen of Research Articles on my scribble here is high praise indeed. And Telerin fairytales sound fascinating (and, well, Lúthien is about the closest we can get and her fate isn't all that different, apart from the whole question of setting).
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.