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 ...
Revolution
Create a fanwork using a quotation, artwork, speech, or song concerned with protest and revolution as your inspiration. 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.
Interesting! Thank you for sharing!
Do you think you might, at any point, write Maglor undertaking that rabbinic procedure?
You're welcome!
Probably not, for a couple of reasons. One is that I do think Maglor and Maedhros fulfilled their oath when they regained the Silmarils. The second is that the amount of research I'd need to do to feel comfortable writing it is not insignificant. It was sheer luck I stumbled across the book about Kol Nidrei; before then, I'd assumed I'd need to be a rabbi or have access to far more legalistically inclined texts than I do in order to research the Kol Nidrei question.
Tolkien nerditry combined with intricate Halachic analysis- I love it! I wonder what would resonate with Maglor more, if he went through a 'mortal religion' phase- the Jewish emphasis on 'return' and personal effort to undo your mistakes, or the Christian concept of 'grace/salvation' being bestowed by God? (If you feel like having further fun with Elves and Jews, there's a book that includes the Four Questions in Quenya).
I didn't know those theories about the origin of Kol Nidrei- but I've read that it took on the significance it does now because of the Spanish Inquistion. Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity saw Kol Nidrei as a symbolic way of renouncing the vows that were forced on them.
Thank you! I'm a Jewish geek and once I realized I could answer the question without needing to become a rabbi first, I did my best.
Well, I suppose the answer for a "mortal phase" would be dependent on if you're Jewish or Christian (or some other religion). Tolkien would clearly go for Christianity; I would absolutely go for Judaism. It makes more sense to me that you have to work to obtain forgiveness and that there are crimes that cannot be forgiven.
(I knew about that book-- I attended my synagogue's cantor's second night seder this year and he owns it-- but I had not realized it had the Four Questions in Quenya. I'd asked him if it did, but he couldn't find it! So Lyra's translating them for me.)
I learned that Kol Nidrei came about because of the Inquisition, but during my research, it's clear Kol Nidrei predates the Inquisition by centuries. Regardless of the origin, I do agree that it does have more significance because of the conversos.
What a concept! A fascinating and informative read, and a unique view and answer to a pervasive question. Thanks!
Thank you!
(My apologies for just now replying. I was caught up in the edit-profile bug and didn't realize you'd commented.)
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