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!
Sign-Up to Hand Out Scavenger Hunt Prompts Our May challenge will be a Matryoshka built around a scavenger hunt. If you'd like to hand out prompts (and receive comments on your work for doing so!), you can sign up to do so.
New Challenge: Everyman Create a fanwork about an ordinary character in the legendarium using a quote about an unnamed character as inspiration.
Cultus Dispatches: Fanworks, AI, and Resistance by Dawn and Grundy The fan studies column Cultus Dispatches returns with a history of how Tolkien fanworks fandom has reacted and resisted generative AI by drawing strong boundaries in a way that is not typical for the fandom.
Inspired by collecting the prompts for the Everyman challenge, this essay considers how ordinary people are subsumed and silenced in The Silmarillion, which begins a three-book arc that ends with the rise of the humble and ordinary.
A Teleri fishing boat captain turns to farming on abandoned Noldor lands after her ship is stolen. A Noldor farmer returns with Finarfin to find that his land belongs to the Teleri now.
In his old age, Isildur's former esquire Ruinamacil, known to later histories only as Ohtar, writes his own account of his escape from the ambush at Gladden Fields and journey to Imladris, and the history of his friend whom Isildur ordered to flee with him.
These were simply flashes, a hint of a wider, greater world. A tantalizing glimpse of more, always at the edge of awareness, never within reach. Míriel would grasp it, if something as intangible as the concept of color could overflow in bounteous wonder over her hands.
By definition, fanworks fandom does not draw a lot of boundaries, but community archives and events have taken a strong stance against AI-generated fanworks due to ethical considerations and member input.
In a book as full of death as the Quenta Silmarillion, grief and mourning are surprisingly absent. The characters who receive grief and mourning—and those who don't—appear to do so due to narrative bias. Grief and mourning (or a lack of them) serve to draw attention toward and away from objectionable actions committed by characters.
This presentation for Mereth Aderthad 2025 discusses the parallels between the concept of abnegation in the scientific work surrounding the atomic bomb and in The Silmarillion. The relinquishment of self-interest in favor of the interests of others, abnegation was identified by Tolkien as a powerful act of spirit and reason. The legendarium has many examples of the complexities of abnegation, which parallel similar discussions held by physicists during and after World War II.
Bilbo, the strange old hobbit with the wandering feet, senses something special in young Frodo the first time he sees the lad; as they become close, they find in each other a cameraderie not well understood by other hobbits. Five poignant moments between Bilbo and Frodo Baggins over the course…
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.
Thanks for reading!! :) I think of it as sort of Ann Carson inspired, but just looked War Music up and it seems like it's along these lines. I do want to continue but not sure what "fragment" to pick up on next...
I quite liked this. It had something of an epic verse feel, and something of wry wit too with the insertion of modern-sounding terms ('tranoceanic passage').
Wow! I loved this. Particularly "A fine business model." and "hobbyist jewelwers". I've read Homer (a long time ago), but not the Noldolante yet. It seems to be more gloom than slash...
This is beautiful! And I quite like that it's "without any proper meter"; the style gives me the sense of reading a poem that's been translated into English from an ancient language, which fits very nicely with the subject matter.
I particularly enjoyed this line: "and arose in wrath, so awfully the enemy himself now"
Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but I really love how in the context of the whole poem, this line is helping to tell about Fëanor seeing through Morgoth's lie- but even as he does so, I feel like the word choice here calls forward really nicely to his later actions.
"Arose in wrath" seems to me to echo the meaning of Melkor, "He who arises in Might"; so even as Fëanor condemns Morgoth, he is in some sense doing what Morgoth does, and thereby becoming "the enemy himself now".
I just thought it was really cool how that line fits smoothly and logically with what's happening within the story of the poem, but when it's read as its own entity it can be taken as some really clever foreshadowing!
Comments on Jail-Crow
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.