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.
Loaded with fabulous details that define setting, characterization, and backstory. I am no expert on architecture or design, but you've convinced me of the authenticity. Love the discussion of the strangeness of adjusting to the new light. Beautifully paced and lovely language.
Loaded with fabulous details that define setting, characterization, and backstory. I am no expert on architecture or design, but you've convinced me of the authenticity. Love the discussion of the strangeness of adjusting to the new light. Beautifully paced and lovely language.
Thank you so much! I'm still at the point in my fiction writing where I'm doing it by instinct, and I get very nervous when I have to put some of it out there for other folks to see. It's so much easier to do that knowing there is appreciation for what I am trying to do. The story I want to tell (which is at heart about thingmakery/subcreation) is perforce set at a time of enormous social and even cosmic change. It's important to me that I both stick as closely as I can to whatever canon is available and also make some attempt to have my characters grapple with what is going on around them, from delight to PTSD and everything in between.
Glad you like it! I'm trying to imagine how it must have been for a princess to be as displaced in as many ways as Galadriel was at the beginning of the First Age.
Thanks! One of the things I want to explore about Galadriel is her identity as a sort of Yavanna-Jesuit, that is, one of the most deeply educated in the branches of knowledge for which Yavanna is renowned. (As I look at her history in Middle-Earth I see the influence of that early education playing out across especially Eldarin but also Edain culture, and I will be writing more about it as this series develops.) I imagine that her meeting a sentient being who is also clearly tied to Yavanna would have set up a form of religious resonance for her, especially in the first full spring season of Beleriand under Anor. Perhaps Galadriel's hunting cousins would have preferred to meet Ents rather than Entwives, given their shared ties to Oromë!
Wow, it's a really interesting and original idea that the elves could communicate to the trees like this, and that they could mutually shape trees' future. Well done!
Thanks! I feel like I've always known how Galadriel (and others) would and could talk to trees, but this is the first time I've had to consider at length how she might have gone about "encouraging" them.
As for Teleporno, well, he's an old-fashioned kinda guy. He'll probably not let that phrase slip again for years!
By rights it should be, yes. :-) But honestly, I don't think I am ready for the emotional turmoil of telling Galadriel about her family's woes. It's hard enough writing her side of things, which she is repressing very determinedly.
Comments on The Fairest Vessels That Ever Sailed
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.