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.
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.
This is great, very creative and I like it a lot! I especially like this passage:
Our words do not speak of them, but our bodies remember, and that is why my people have skin as dark as the earth and skies of our homelands, why the Fisher-folk are lithe and slender as the fish that they hunt and the Forest-folk are nimble and swift like deer, why the Crafty Ones are strong and high-grown as the mountains in which they delve for ores and the Fair Ones have skin and hair as pale as the stars to which they sing their praises. We are all Quendi, but we were not always in this place together.
Also really appreciate his reasoning here:
For the true story, ask the smiths. They have far more lore than just the knowledge of metals and stones. Maybe they will tell you - although they do not normally share their wisdom with the uninitiated.
I see you've revisited your Morwe character here. Really interesting elvish prehistory! Pre-Quendi--there are resonances here both with canon and RL history that I can't all unpick.
Morwe insists that he wants a whole Avarin novel at some point, but fortunately, he is content with the occasional ficlet for the time being. Glad you find the pre-history (and the resonances with real and canon history) interesting. Thank you!
gosh, what a daring canon-attack ! i like the 'bee-dance' notion... i'm a bit of a dancer (6 years of ballet) but its really alien to me that i could communicate anything much other than my enthusiasm for the music. it makes your Elves (and the bees) feel stranger than ever.
also, as one with part-neanderthal genes, i must agree with your premise of multiple origins and later convergence. very thought provoking ! good one :)
Aw, thank you! And I'm very glad you enjoyed my potentially heretic piece.
Heh, I normally write my Elves too human, so maybe this is a good occasion of rendering them a bit more Other. On the other hand, there are dancing traditions in which different body positions and gestures carry meaning, and even more modern styles like eurythmics that are meant to communicate messages, so I guess it's all human after all ;).
Amusingly, I didn't even think about RL precedents of convergence - I just felt like shaking up that silly Imin, Tata and Enel story up a bit. Neanderthal high-five!
While reading this, I often found myself nodding and thinking, "Oh hell, yes!". What people may believe is one thing, the truth -- another, often uncomfortable. Thank you so much for writing this!
Oh this was so good! I love this idea of nearly forgotten times, lost because there were no words for it. And communicating by dancing! :D And adapting to the environments they were living in.
I wasn't actually thinking of full-out communicating by dancing (in the way that bees do) - more like commemorating important events in dancing. Though presumably, there would have been gestures and motions for everyday use! But I'm glad you loved the ideas I played with in this fic. Thank you for commenting!
I was wanting THIS for a long time now. Not only the counting story of Imin, Tata and Enel, but the whole mythical premise of Tolkien about "awakening" has always bothered me in a hundred ways, even if I perceive its lyrical beauty and I have enjoyed many marvelous fics where it is taken at its face value (and where its many fascinating consequences are shown).
At last, a scientifically verosimile tale of the origins of Elves! It could have been the record of an interviewing anthropologist. And is the knowledge of smiths a hint to paleonthology?
I love your stories for your excellent talent as writer, but I wanted to give support to your "heretic" view in this one. Science is cool!
And humble apologies if this review sounds strange, English is not in my mother tongue.
Thank you for your enthusiastic review! And if you hadn't told me that English isn't your native language, I wouldn't have noticed; it does not sound strange at all.
I'm so thrilled that you enjoyed this story so much. I quite like the "awakening" story for its lyrical beauty, as you aptly call it, but I've always assumed that it was more mythology than history, and this was a great chance to explore that idea further. The fact that you see parallels to anthropology and paleonthology is high praise indeed. I have indeed taken some inspiration from cultural anthropology, including the concept of smiths as people with liminal powers and knowledge, so I'm very glad it comes across convincingly.
Science is cool indeed, and I think it can beautifully be interwoven with Tolkien's mythological themes to enhance and enrich the Legendarium. Again, I'm very happy that you enjoyed this "heretic" version of Cuiviénen. Thank you so, so much for your lovely review!
Oh, I'm so glad this interpretation klicks with your own! I love the idea of Cuiviénen but also the reading of it as a myth, so having an idea to combine these two concepts made me so happy - and finding that it works for others makes me even happier. Thank you!
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.