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.
I really enjoyed reading this story! It was well written and humorous - you did a very good job. I especially like the fact that you took into consideration the lasting effects that being captured in Angband would have had on Maedhros. Well executed indeed! Thanks for sharing!
I enjoyed this story tremendously. You manage to write your characters very sympathetically without turning the story into long introspective emo-fests. I really like your concise writing style and your skill for formulating things so that I find myself going "Yes! Exactly! You nailed it!" Thank you very much for a great (if that can be said, considering the subject matter ;)) read!
Thank you very much! I'm happy to be praised for conciseness! I think there might be bits of the series where I indulge in emotional introspection at a little greater length than here, but hope not to have overdone it...
From poignant to chilling to funny and beautiful writing all way through. Numerous perfect lines stick in my memory: Maeglor's thoughts on orcs; Maedhros' on the lack of appropriate swearwords, on poor perceptive Carnistir's needs, on his own 'general derangement and insanity'...
There are so many gems in this short story that all I can think to do is go look for more from the same hand.
Thank you very much! I am happy that you think I got the emotional range right here! I've posted some more stories now, although I'm afraid they aren't written from Maedhros's own point of view. He does get to have his say quite a lot, though...
Still working my way through your stories. Love this one as well. I see you credit Dawn with influencing your characterization. No wonder I find it so convincing and sympathetic. She also greatly influenced my own Maitimo and Findekano stories--in fact I often joke that I write fanfic of her canon. I do depart as well.
I love that you use humor. I can't explain why the First Age is my choice of subject matter--anguish and high heroism really doesn't suit either my personal taste in either reading or writing. But when I fell in love with these characters (pretty much the whole House of Finwe, although I have my favorites!) I fell hard. You hold my attention and keep me with you by your use of human psychology and like I mentioned before humor. I am enjoying this series so much.
Thank you very much for taking the trouble to engage with the series!
I think Dawn is just the most glaringly obvious of my influences. However, since I spent the months before I wrote the first of these stories voraciously reading Maedhros stories on the internet, I would find it pretty hard to compile a comprehensive list of everyone who influenced me...
I'm sure there is a quotation from the Sage himself about why humour is important - although he is more likely to have written it with the Lord of the Rings in mind than the Silmarillion, I guess: something about the necessity of hobbits. But Third Age elves have a sense of humour, so surely elves of the First Age did, too!
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.