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] No Time Have I by Flora-lass
A Silmarillion acrostic.
[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] 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 ...
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.
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.
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.
I like the idea of Nerdanel being able to describe exactly what the feeling was like and to seek out Anaire to comfort her. (Perhaps a little, unconsciously, to confirm whether it was his death or that of Fingon.)
It's such a sad story! I enjoyed the use of scents and color and memories and also found the physical/psychic response to a distant event totally plausible and likely in a people who can connect mind to mind a great distances.
I'm working on a story for this same challenge that deals with that last aspect also. In my case the death of Finwe. Thank god I have that part written, because I would feel funny writing it immediately after reading yours. Mine is similar but different.
Oh, I'm glad yours is going to be similar but different! When I read that you were writing a pivotal event from Eärwen's perspective I was a bit worried that you might have the Nirnaeth in mind too. Looking forward to reading it! I'm glad you liked the use of sensory input here. I was trying to pay more attention than usual to more than sight, so it's good to know that it worked for you. Also glad you find the physical/pyschic response convincing!
One really feels Anaire's dread and grief here, so vividly described and such a poignant contrast with her surroundings. The dialogue between Anaire and Nerdanel is well handled, the mutual support as well as the points of friction.
Oh, I'm glad you enjoyed the dialogue as well as the contrast between Anaire's inner and outer perception here! Thank you!
Oh this is heartbreaking. You've given us that deep sense of unknown dread. I've always been of the opinion that Nerdanel, Anaire, Finarfin and Earwen would know somehow that their loved ones had died--a visceral sensation as you've described.
Thank you! I'm actually sceptical about the level of mind-reading or long-distance psychic communication among the Elves, but at the same time I'm convinced that something as drastic as the sundering of their love-bond or the death of a child would be something they notice, even those who have no talent for osanwe-kenta. Glad to see I'm not alone :)
Oh, ouch! I don't know who to feel worse for - Anairë or Nerdanel. I wonder why Namo waits so long to notify the next of kin?
It's a combination of several things (in my headcanon, obviously!). For one, I don't think that one second you see that Balrog charging you and the next second you look into Námo's face; even if the call to Mandos comes instantaneously after death and the spirit follows it at once, I expect that some confusion and disorientation will be involved. Thus, it takes some time for the spirit to "settle" and be ready to face Námo (or even just a friendly Maiarin secretary) and be identified beyond doubt. Then, Námo's priority is judgement and counselling, not PR, so notifying the next of kin is something that's done when there's nothing more important going on. He doesn't technically have to inform anyone - next of kin living in Middle-earth receive no Valarin message at all - so this is one of these things that get perpetually postponed. (To be more charitable towards Námo, I think the emotions of the living are complex and uncomfortable for him, so it takes him a while to prepare a message and he never likes sending them.) Or perhaps these messengers are being sent out like four times per year, so if someone dies at the beginning of the trimester, that's just tough luck? But more likely, there's actually no proper code and it all happens rather haphazardly. I haven't given much thought to the proceedings at Mandos so far! Looks like a corporate crackfic waiting to happen!
Anyway, thank you for your thought-provoking comment!
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