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.
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.
[Writing] An exercise in music... And patience by Aprilertuile
Makalaurë was sitting at the harp in his music room. He was holding a dark blindfold in his hands and was looking at it with much scepticism.
[Writing] No Time Have I by Flora-lass
A Silmarillion acrostic.
[Writing] I called it Fate that I should fail by AdmirableMonster
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…
[Writing] All of you by chrissystriped
Elrond and Celebrían celebrate their anniversary with their family.
[Writing] Lament for the Singer by daughterofshadows
A short thing about Maglor, death and grieving.
[Writing] Cosmological Poems of Arda by AaronAzrael
I would like to share my revelations of Tolkien's Universe in the form of narrative and emotional poems.
[Writing] Eä's Redemption by AaronAzrael
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…
Bollywood
Prompts this month are films, songs, and tropes from India's dazzling film industry, Bollywood. Read more ...
Kings & Kink
Throughout history, wherever there is writing, there is erotica. This challenge pulls its prompts from "vintage" works of romance and erotica. (Nonromantic and nonsexual options are also available.) Read more ...
Fandom Chocolate … or Authors Love Comments by Dawn Walls-Thumma
[]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.
Passing Ships by Simon J. Cook
[]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.
Fanfiction and the Serious Business of Writer's Craft by Dawn Walls-Thumma
[]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.
[Writing] Staging a Battle by StarSpray
[]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.
[Writing] From whose bourn no traveller returns by losselen
[]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.
[Writing] Sand Sorcery by StarSpray
[]It is well known that Psamathos does not leave his cove. He does not like to get his feet wet, and prefers to spend his days dozing under the sun.
Fellowship of the Fics: Summer Stories 2024
Fellowship of the Fics offers four weeks of summer-themed prompts during the month of July.
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.
July 2024 Call for Papers and Proposals
Conferences and publications that have open calls for papers and proposals in July 2024.
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.
An interesting look at the Easterlings.
Gil-galad is very much a child here, isn't he?
Thank you so much! And yes, Gil-galad is definitely a child here. He's about of an age with Abaqai, whom I'd imagined as fourteen or fifteen at most, but Elves mature at a much slower rate than Men, so he appears much younger.
I like the idea! Maedhros listening to the advice of an Easterling tactician, the sensible hostage plan that unfortunately backfires, the daring escape, Cirdan's and Galdor's reactions...
And that some of Bor's tribe survive (we hope), east of the mountains.
Also Gil-Galad with tar on his circlet!
Thank you, Himring, that was a lovely review to read! I had a lot of fun working with the Easterlings and their perspective, no doubt also thanks to your fic and Broddun (whom I think Ayulan might think of highly as a person, even if they are on opposite sides) who made me entertain the idea of Easterling fic to begin with (in general, not for this prompt in particular, it's just where all that converged) and giving them something of a hopeful ending - if I have any say, they'll be finding their kin in Rhûn again and living out the rest ot their days in peace.
Gil-galad was a delight to write as well. It was exhausting keeping up with him and his antics (poor Ivrellain! poor Alphangil, although she's obviously absent/busy in this fic), but exploring him was fun. :)
These interminglings of the Western and Eastern cultures in Middle-earth are among my favorite themes, and this story really filled the bill. It's refreshing to see the Easterlings portrayed with such dignity. As an avid fan of drawing upon primary world history to interweave with Tolkien's secondary world, it probably comes as now surprise that I love how you used Mongolian culture as your inspiration for the Easterlings. Fits perfectly.
Your characters are all well-drawn and vivid in this short story, Elleth, and I got a big kick out of young Gil-galad (your depiction of his personality works very well for me) and Abaqai.
It comes as no surprise, but it comes as a delight anyway - with you as the mistress of informing Middle-earth cultures with real-world counterparts, I was hoping it would pass muster if you decided to read it, and I'm very happy it did! :) I couldn't help treating the Easterlings with dignity - impossible not to when stepping into someoen's shoes as a writer since their motivations and worldview make their behaviour so much easier to understand (looking at you, DM!). I'd briefly considered writing Brodda and Lorgan into this story and ruminated on their characters in the process, and they landed smack in a very grey area in the process even though they fought on Morgoth's side (and now I very much want to write them and their life in Dor-lómin as well). But "pround and barbaric" (as Tolkien puts it) doesn't really cut it, especially not for the Easterlings of Bór's tribe who might have been elevated into Elf-Friend status if the Nirnaeth had gone their way.
I'm glad Gil-galad and Abaqai convinced, too. I quite like this characterization of him myself, it seems like a good starting point for the longest-reigning king of the Noldor, and I'm very fond of Abaqai as well, and have some ideas how to carry on her legacy in my take on the legendarium. She's going to make it far. :)
Thank you so much for reviewing here as well.
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