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 created an account here primarily to review this remarkable piece. After discovering and reading it a couple weeks ago, I've come back and reread it several times since, and I keep trying to leave a review, but proper words do not come. I'm usually too busy trying not to cry.
I suppose that's a good place to start, though - the ending, especially that very, very last part just... aaaugh. Every. Time. Understand that - aside from when I'm extremely angry and/or frustrated (whereupon I always burst into tears, which is annoying) - I can count on one hand the number of things of the written word, movies and songs together that have ever brought me to tears. It takes something very special to do that - and to do it multiple times, no less! And every time I read this piece, if nothing else, my eyes have not remained dry reading the last two sections of the last chapter.
That's another thing - every time I reread this, I discover something new - some detail I missed in previous rereadings, and every detail adds to this horrible tragedy, which you have so wonderfully captured. Maedhros' descent into madness is awful to behold, and I ache for him terribly - it's almost a relief, in a way, when he dies, because you know that maybe - as Maglor suggests - he is finally home. He can stop hurting for everyone who's died - and maybe he can be with their family and with Fingon, once more. Maybe he can finally have peace.
And Maglor, too, just hurts to think of... you can feel his heart-wrenching sorrow over what happened all the way through, and the way you write his relationship with Maedhros... This is really a story about Maedhros, and yet you can glean so much of the story of Maglor through the way he talks about things - what he chooses to tell and how he tells it.
I really like the way in which this is told, too - in fragments that aren't necessarily in chronological order. It's not the easiest read, but I think it's more effective this way and seems more... how Maglor might recall things, I think - how he might string together scenes by association more than by the chronology. And that's part of what makes rereading it over and over so worthwhile - each time, I get a better sense of the whole. And I could go through and pick out all the little details I really like and say why, except that then this review would go on forever, I think.
It's just... this story has moved me in many ways, I adore the way everything within it is depicted, and I'm not sure I've done it justice in my review, but I thought - instead of silently rereading it again - maybe I ought to try to put what it spoke to me into words.
Thank you for writing and for posting this work of art.
I am deeply honoured to have written something that meant so much to you. Thank you very much for engaging with the story on so many levels. I appreciate especially what you tell me about Maglor in this story. I've actually attempted to write about Maedhros being able to be with Fingon once more (at the end of Watching the Star and now also in Down. Out. Up.), but I'm not sure I wasn't simply trying to console myself...
I loved this, Himring. I'm just home from work, and my brain is not fully functional at the moment, but I wanted you to know that I read it and how much I enjoyed it.
Himring- I have said you are the master. There is such tragedy in Maedhros' story and you show him unravelling through Maglor's loving eyes- the pathos, the tenderness and love underlines that terrible oath, the dreadful loss that they all endured but perhaps these two more than anyone in the whole of Tolkien's world. You write it so beautifully- every moment. The gradual reduction of images, of feeling, of narrative so it becomes merely dispogue as if that is all they can cope with- no longer even thinking, just planning to fulfil that damned oath. And the snippets of insight into Fingon and Maedhros- emphaisisng how little time they had together. I cant tell you how deeply this makes me feel, how terribly sad it has made me...
and the final scene just underlines it all beautifully. You konw you made me cry but the sense of tragic loss and waste goes so much deeper.
I've read this several times but never actually commented before, but now I'm sitting here in the dark rereading it on mobile and crying a little bit, so I think it' sa out time I told you how wonderful this is.
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.