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.
And it was a pleasure every time. You always manage to convey scenes and personalities so well but you did a particularly amazing job with this story. This chapter focusing on Elrond's childhood, his sensitivity and fascination with Maedhros, is poignant and tender. There are many wonderful details, the tattered battle flag, the oven in the forge, Elrond's conversation with Maedhros about Fingon that reflects the epic behind the simplicity of their Yule celebration.
This chapter set in Imladris is equally impressive. It's so great to see Celebrian as a match for Elrond in personality. She really shines here as a fully realized character in her own right and not as an appendage or tragic memory. I thoroughly enjoyed this story and you did an amazing job balancing these two periods in Elrond's life.
Dawn's calligraphy and illuminations beautifully illustrate some of the best moments as well.
Thank you again!! Dawn is really, really good at that. I had fun doing Celebrian. I figure as the wife of Elrond, mistress of Imladris, and daughter of Celeborn and Galadriel, she could not be just a big fat zero. I hate the idea of fics in which her role is be only a victim. How flat even that tragic story without her having been a person at all before. I'm tried! Thanks so very much.
Oh well .. I stumbled over this yesterday night by browsing the Maedhros-AO3 Tag for ships others than Fingon/Maedhros (and admittedly I love this dysfunctional family of Maedhros, Maglor and Elros/Elrond to pieces, and yes I also enjoy it when it ends up with a ship, given it is portrayed in a specific manner) - and here we are :D
This story is so wonderful - the fascination Elrond feels upon Nelyo, his emotions, his thoughts, the tree decoration and everything are so wonderfully written and so believable with all the details you added throughout the story. But there's just so much more in it: humor, character exploration (i love Erestor here), the hints of Celebrian in regard to Galadriel, their own relationship as an equal match to each other, Celebrian as a strong personality herself .
>“No, not actually. That was but puppy love, or hero worship, or adolescent lust, or all of those together.” Everything I said was total bullshit. I had loved Maedhros with all of my young heart.<
And I adore this line to pieces, because it says so much about their relationship, about Elrond's personality and his character, just as much as this line does: >Elros used to tell me that I had an open heart--as often as not a criticism or a warning. But, still, I suppose this is what he meant.<
Thank you so much for writing this, because it really saved my restless night yesterday :D
I'm thrilled that you found this one and enjoyed it. I vividly remember what a huge kick I got out of writing it. I love doing the dysfunctional family thing. I also love having characters fall for Maedhros. I have had so much fun with this version of Erestor over the years. I am really happy you liked him also. I love trying to make Celebrian a worthy in her own right--those parents!!--they really must have felt like living legends to those around her as a girl, but Elrond was able to see beyond all that and fall in love with the young woman herself.
What a nice surprise to wake up to this review today--bleak December here in Brooklyn, although we have yet to have any snow.
This is one of the best tales in this period. It's delicacy and poignancy of Maedhros' loss is perfect, the lightness of your touch dealing with such terrible and tragic loss just emphasisies it -and makes it powerfully 'real'. And the 'scenery' is magical- perfect for Christmas. Very sensual and textured actually. I love this.
Wow, Ziggy! What a wonderful comment to wake up to this morning! I am so thrilled that you like it so much. I wrote it from a place close to my heart. I do love all of these characters a lot.
I do like Celebrian in htis- so much her mother's daughter and I like the way you point out things about her- that she was in teh shadow of Galadriel, and yet she still managed to stand out somehow, her delicacy and steel, her cleverness and subtlety. And the rascally Erestor- very much the best way ot see him. Such a great fic.
Thanks so very much. I have always thought that Celebrian had to have been pretty amazing given the family she had around her, to whom she meant so much, although Tolkien says so little about her. I also could not resist exploring what it might have been like to have Celeborn and Galadriel as parents--OMG! especially Galadriel as one's mother!! I adore writing this version of Erestor also. So happy you liked him.
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.