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.
Everyman
Create a fanwork about an ordinary character in the legendarium using a quote about an unnamed character as inspiration. Read more ...
Random Challenge
Anniversary Contest
To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the publication of <em>The Silmarillion,</em> we hosted a writing contest for Silmarillion-based fiction. Read more ...
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.
Very funny, Oshun. This totally cracked me up. I'd say Cirdan had the last laugh after barging in on your boys in flagrante delicto. (Wall sex -- how delicious! lol)
I think Círdan really enjoys torturing them. He expects that Maedhros will remain relentlessly polite and Fingon will try to protect him and try to remain calm, until he finally cracks, which Círdan knows he always will.
What is it about wall sex? I guess the desperation that will not allow the participants to walk even a room or two away to make love in comfort that makes it seem so very hot.
This is both adorable and a real hoot. I love the curmudgeonly Cirdan and his opinion of Maedhros's reading choices. His teasing Fingon with the Legolas story is a highlight as is the "Prince Valiant" line. And this:
"The kiss had everything that anyone could ever want from a kiss. It engaged the heart, inflamed the senses, brought forward all of the tenderness and warmth of a life of lasting love, of shared victories and horrors, estrangements and reconciliations, all of which had combined to enable them to come out of the other end of the tunnel and reunite in Valinor."
made me melt. I know you prefer to write long but even your ficlets are full of warmth and heart.
Awww! What a lovely review for this story. I'll just say, 'thank you,' nicely. You are too good to me and thank you for reading it the first time and around and probably weed out dozens of typos--I do not even remember any more. Thank you so very much. I had fun writing it. Painless as one of these ever is.
I think I'd personally consider that a candidate for a Worst Kiss prize as well as a Best Kiss prize (although I imagine you could win only in one category at a time!). But each to his own, Cirdan!
Poor dear Fingon! Never mind, Fingon, he'll go away soon.
I'd personally consider that a candidate for a Worst Kiss prize as well as a Best Kiss prize (although I imagine you could win only in one category at a time!).
I know! Fingon is so good, he just wants Maedhros to be happy. Well, hardly orginal but whatever. Works for a lot of people!
Oh, god, that's hilarious! Círdan as a rambling oldster is a scream: "Círdan sighed, one of those tiresome sighs of the Unbegotten when they want one to know that they think they are faced with mentally deficient younger sons of the Eldar" AHAHAHAHA!
I haven't read The Science of Kissing but I can vouch for Ms. Kirshenbaum as a top-rate science writer, so I have no doubt her sources are sound. Sheril used to write for Science Blogs, and I first made her acquaintance there when we had a pleasant chat about holothurin (a kind of chemical classified as a cardiac glycosides - digitalis is another) in sea cucumbers. We then periodically commented on one another's blogs. Very intelligent young woman.
So Círdan had best watch his saucy remarks about the science! ;^)
Glad you enjoyed Cirdan. He is a cross between my current landlady and one of my great uncle (long deceased). Oh, I ran across a review of Kirshenbaum's Sience of Kissing while I was trying to think of a topic for this story. I will trust you on the science of it (actually, like Maedhros, I would like to read it. There has been interesting research on nature and causes of human attraction).
Cirdan is pulling everyone's leg on all sides and is not to be taken seriously. He just loves to rile people up.
You must have given your frisky little cousin some very wet and sloppy kisses to have stimulated enough obsessive thoughts about you to send him trotting across the most perilous wasteland in Arda right into the very jaws of Melkor to rescue your traitorous arse from the cliffs of Thangorodrim.”
Comments on A Kiss Is Never Just a Kiss
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.