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.
Largely focused on Númenor, its fall, and the aftermath, as seen from the perspective of two Mannish scientists, bit players in some ways, but who nonetheless cast their shadows across the history of Middle Earth.
A story of three friends in Númenor, one of whom attracts the attention of the High Priest. What does friendship mean in the shadow of the Black Temple?
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…
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.
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.
Scribbles & Drabbles 2024
A chill Tolkien event, where artists make art, and authors write little stories in response. Begins in June and ends in November.
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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 invented some of those specific interactions (and enjoyed imagining them!), but I think Tom must have got really round and about to get all those canonical names! And of course we know he has had a long time to meet interesting people!
I love the idea of enigmatic Tom being baffled by something — and found it very funny, if understandable, that he was not a little put out that they didn't stay to chat with him... only to have Goldberry laugh and offer to introduce him!
I'd never read the poem before, so thank you too for this introduction; it has such marvellous imagery that really resonates with magic and beauty, and you've brought it all together into Middle-earth so marvellously.
Lovely!
(Tee-hee, I actually went and looked lintips up because I thought they might be a local common name of some European species of something!)
I'm glad I was able to introduce you to the poem! I only just found out about it myself. (I have an earlier edition of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil that doesn't have the appendix.)
I think Tolkien would be delighted and amused that you thought the lintips were a European species!
This is delightful! I love the snippets of everyone Tom has met and befriended over the Ages, and Tom being baffled that someone doesn't want to hang around and chat with him.
Tom being baffled is already in the poem itself, but I expanded on it a bit!
Interestingly, I noticed that the bit about Tom's list of names according to Elrond has some resemblance to Gandalf's list of names according to himself. Which might not mean that much, really, because Tolkien likes names, of course, but I was reminded how Gandalf compares himself to Tom toward the end...
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.