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…
Current Challenge
Bollywood
Prompts this month are films, songs, and tropes from India's dazzling film industry, Bollywood. 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 had to go back to see if you had marked this as completed, and I was hoping the entire time that you hadn't, because this sets up so beautifully what could be a long story. It especially arouses the desire to witness Erestor and Glorfindel's first meeting in the Third Age within the continuity you have created here.
I suppose I will have to relegate myself to imagining the continuation as I have done for a long time with your story, "Cultural Differences." I've actually contemplated asking you if I could take a shot at writing a sequel to that one, but I can't even get started on the story that would be my first Silmfic that I've been brainstorming over for more than a year now.
Anyway, beautifully done. You always have such a wealth of detail in your prose, and yet the style of your writing conveys that detail effortlessly. Well done turning that attention to social politics in high elven society, this time.
Aww, thank you so much for taking the time to leave such a lovely review - I'm happy you enjoyed the story. Since I posted it I've been trying to decide if this works as a long story or if it should stop here, and I still don't know *g*. It is sort of complete in itself with the 'might have been' ending, but I can see how to carry it forward in Gondolin for a bit. It's the first time I've written anything there and I kept finding ideas that need exploring further, so that would be fun. I just don't want to do anything that takes anything away from how this all worked out, if that makes sense?
Meeting again in Imladris would be a good challenge - I read so many of those stories when I first came into the fandom that it'd be a stretch to find a new angle to approach it from. Still... will see if they talk to me and what they say.
Cultural Differences, grrr! I have been trying on and off for ages to put together a sequel for Oshun, but everything I start looks like the same story in a different location. They are a most uncooperative couple to try and work with.
Oh, thanks for posting this wonderful story here! So much to love about it: the strong characterizations (you do this so well); the setting (the details such that I felt like I was there); and the fascinating layers of social structure and politics. I'd love to visit your Gondolin again.
Rose!Glorfindel and Rose!Erestor are glad to be of service. Here are a couple of recent photos of the fine fellows:
Glorfindel
Erestor among the catmint with Seymour the Rose photobombing.
I just smiled and smiled at this review - both at the very kind words and the gorgeous pictures. The boys are looking wonderful and none the worse for all that snow! (have just found your rose post on LJ -- my roses would die of shame if they saw those photographs). I would love to revisit Gondolin. So many ideas came along that I had no space to explore in the story and I'm really curious to see where they'd lead. Now if I just had a plot...
So I am working my way through your works and finding the same wonderful attention to detail in each. This is such an intersting take on Gondolin, which I had always imagined more buttoned down and laced up to allow a Gentleman's Agreement, but I like the idea of it and can see it making snese in Gondolin where it must have been stifling. With immortality and no migration, they must have all known each other so well and have ended up so bored with each other. No wonder Aredhel calls it the Birdcage. I like too the different versions of Glorfindel and Erestor you have - although I like best the witty, suave Erestor of later years, it is entriely beleivable that he was wide eyed and innocent once. You write that youthfulness ever so well.
Oh wow, I battled with this one! I've written a lot of Erestor and Glorfindel, but never the type of relationship where there's an obvious difference in ages and Erestor is young and innocent, so it felt very counter-intuitive. I couldn't imagine how they'd look or sound, plus I'd never written anything about Gondolin. Then Pandemonium posted pictures of her roses and I saw the very formal looking yellow Glorfindel rose and that sweet, fresh, pink rose and something just cicked in my head, which is weird because I don't tend to work off visual inspiration (I have art training, so I should - go figure).
I don't know where half the ideas came from about Gondolin - I have a friend I used to talk about it with but I'd never written about it before. I guess a lot of possible details had just been growing over time when I wrote about Glorfindel mentioning things from his past. I know there's a lot more story, it's just about finding time and the right headspace to write it.
(need to put this in somewhere so --- thank you so much for all these comments, it's like early Christmas. Smiling so much!)
Oh, this was lovely! Your Gondolin sounds terribly stifling, for many reasons, but it's wonderful that Glorfindel and Erestor were able to snatch a few moments away from all that, and that Erestor got to enjoy his first ball! (Those happy moments are all the more precious, given Glorfindel appears to have more than a touch of foresight, poor lad.)
I struggled with this to begin with because the dynamic between them (Erestor's extreme youth mainly) was something I'd not done before and they fought me. It was litereally the sight of Pandemonium's roses - the confident, proud Glofrindel and sweet, fresh Erestor - that put everything into place for me. Gondolin fascinates me, sort of like a trainwreck. Confined, hidden ciry, lots of social cooperation needed to keep it running.
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.