Back to Middle-earth Month 2024: Minhiriath Midway

Welcome to the Minhiriath Midway!  Enjoy the fun and games, and collect prompts as you traverse the midway of this year's celebration!

Balloon Pop

Throw a dagger, throw a dart, shoot an arrow, toss an axe (but not a Dwarf).  There are so many ways to pop the balloons in this game.  Take aim and hit your target, and see what prompt you reveal when you pop a balloon. 

Crablor Grab

Try your luck at the Crablor Grab!  This fun game of skill and luck and a little help from Crablor lets you try to pull a prompt from the machine. What prompt will you get? Visit Crablor and find out!

Haunted House

Not for the faint of heart! Visit the Hall of Horrors and collect prompts...if you dare.

Spin the Wheel

So many prompts, so little time!  But why make yourself decide?  Use these fun wheels to find your next prompt. 

• All of Arda Place Randomizer
• Random Animal Friends

Tunnel of Love

A sweet place to pick up endearing prompts.  Some snuggles, some spice, and lots of things that are nice. Climb aboard and take a ride with us.

Additionally, B2MEM is an open event where ANYTHING you create during March counts!  Feel free to add works you start, add to, or finish in March to the gallery!  You can also host your own events -- let us know what you're up to, and we'll add your event to the list of festivities!

There is no need to register in advance to play at the midway.  You can begin posting to the AO3 collection on March 1, 2024. If posting on Tumblr, use the tag B2MEM24 to make your posts easy to find by our team for reblogs!  You can join the Discord at any time!

​Posting & Viewing Works

Beginning March 1st, 2024, works can be posted to the AO3 collection. This collection never closes, so while the event will wrap by the end of April, you can always add works later as you are inspired and finish them. 

Socially Speaking...

Want to chat with others about Spring Into Arda events?  There are parties for B2MEM throughout the event and the server is open year round.  Hang with other B2MEM participants, past and present, on the perpetual Discord! 

Tolkien Fanfic Reading Month 2024

I'm making this my personal thing for all of March, to celebrate "Tolkien Reading Day". Please feel free to make it yours too.

Nothing formal or fancy. No invitation or registration required. No requirements or deadlines.

Simply gorge yourself on some Tolkien fanfic all throughout March. And COMMENT. For the love of Tolkien, please show our hardworking fandom writers some love and appreciation.

Tolkien Pinup Calendar: Thankful for Rare Pairs Bingo

This month’s event we are doing Thankful for Rare Pairs! This is a bingo style event. In total there will be three cards: one with the rare pairs, one with smut prompts, and one with non-smut prompts. We will be reblogging and sharing content from this event for all of March and April (this event runs from March 1st 2024 to April 30th 2024). Do not feel any pressure to complete all the prompts within one month (and don’t feel any pressure to finish all the prompts!).

How to play:

Option 1: If you have one rare pair you really like or one rare pair that really speaks to you, take that pair and use the prompts to create something for them.

Option 2: You can use all the bingo cards with different pairings and different prompts for your creations!

Any fic, art, moodboard, playlist etc. will be included and we are happy to reblog!

Additional rules:

You can use multiple prompts for one creation.  These can come from different cards (pairing + smut prompt + non-smut prompt) or come from the same card (pairing + smut prompt 1 + smut prompt 2, etc.). How you use the prompt cards is up to you!

If you want to play option 1 (only one pairing but using the prompt cards) but your pairing is not on the list: No problem! Just use the free space. If your pairing is a rare pair but not included, we would love to hear about it!  

How do I know if my pairing is a rare pair?  If you feel it is a rare pair it’s a rare pair. 

To get a bingo you need to have a line (horizontal, vertical, or diagonal) filled and this can include the free space. To get a super bingo (we did not know what else to call it) you need to fill up a card, only one card. If you fill up more than one you get more than one super bingo! 

As always, if you want us to reblog please:

1. tag us @tolkienpinupcalendar
2. use the tag #tpcrarepairbingo
3. Submit to our smut-missions form
4. Add the work to our AO3 collection

Winners who get a super bingo win a homemade playlist about whatever you want!

The most important rule is to have fun! We look forward to seeing what you create!

Tolkien Reading Day 2024

Monday 25th March is Tolkien Reading Day 2024 and the theme is Service and Sacrifice. The Tolkien Society is excited to be partnering with The Prancing Pony Podcast and A Long-Expected Soundscape to run this Reading Day. What will you be reading?

What is Tolkien Reading Day?

Tolkien Reading Day is held on the 25^th of March each year. The date of the 25^th of March was chosen as the date on which the Ring was destroyed, completing Frodo’s quest and vanquishing Sauron.

It has been organised by the Tolkien Society since 2003 to encourage fans to celebrate and promote the life and works of J.R.R. Tolkien by reading favourite passages. We particularly encourage schools, museums and libraries to host their own Tolkien Reading Day events.

Reading Day Events

For this year’s Tolkien Reading Day the Tolkien Society is extremely excited to be teaming up with The Prancing Pony Podcast and A Long-Expected Soundscape to host and celebrate the event.

On Saturday 23rd March we will come together and you will be able to attend one of the three Zoom Reading Sessions that will be taking place throughout the day for readers around the world to share their favourite passages and react to the passages shared by the Podcast’s Guest Readers. Did we also mention that these events are free?

How you can take part?

There are a range of ways that you can join in throughout March:

Join the Tolkien Society on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, the Prancing Pony Podcast on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and A Long-Expected Soundscape on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Watch out for our posts across late February and 25th March!

Share your stories (Facebook and Instagram), fleets (Twitter), comments, and photos on any social media platform and use the hashtag #TolkienReadingDay2024. Most of all, we’d love to see videos of you sharing what Tolkien means to you and how he inspires Hope and Courage!

If you want to attend one of the free Zoom sessions on Saturday 23rd March then you’re in luck as we are running sessions in the morning (9-10am GMT), midday (2-3pm GMT), and evening (8-9pm GMT) with the hope that you can find a session that is comfortable for you. Please use the links below to register for your preferred session (timings are in GMT).

We welcome readings from any of Tolkien’s works but are excited to be able to offer readers who wish to read from The Lord of the Rings the chance to read an extract of up to 5 minutes with excerpts from A Long-Expected Soundscape. If you know what you would like to read from The Lord of the Rings then please let us know by Friday 1st March by filling in the relevant parts of the registration form. Someone will then send you your sample to rehearse with.

Register for Reading Session 1 (9-10am GMT)

Register for Reading Session 2 (2-3pm GMT)

Register for Reading Session 3 (8-9pm GMT)

Maedhros and Maglor Week 2024

Maedhros and Maglor Week will run again on February 18th-24th, 2024. This is a fandom event dedicated to exploring the relationship between Maedhros and Maglor! Fanworks of all kinds are welcome (see the Event Guidelines page for details!)

Prompts:

February 18th—Day 1: Treelight

February 19th—Day 2: Trust/Distrust

February 20th—Day 3: Himring and the Gap

February 21st—Day 4: Heroism/Villainy

February 22nd—Day 5: New Horizons

February 23rd—Day 6: Respite

February 24th—Day 7: Storytelling

You can also find a handy prompt schedule here and on the blog with some suggestions for inspiration related to each prompt!

Fanworks for the event can respond to one or more prompts (interpreted however you wish), or they can be totally unrelated to any prompt, as long as there’s a focus on Maedhros and Maglor. This event is inclusive of all iterations of their relationship: please respect everyone’s interpretations and creations!

Happy creating!

Tolkien Society Seminar 2023: Tolkien and Religion Now Available Online

Thirteen presentations from the most recent Tolkien Society Seminar are now available on the Society's YouTube channel!

Although J.R.R. Tolkien deliberately excluded explicit religious references from his legendarium and rejected narrow allegorical readings of The Lord of the Rings, he made no secret of his devout Roman Catholicism and its importance to his sub-creative endeavor. From the creation myth of the “Ainulindalë” to the eucatastrophic destruction of the One Ring, Túrin Turambar’s doomed warrior courage to Frodo Baggins’s self-sacrificial humility, scholars have long examined the influence of Tolkien’s Christian faith and his abiding admiration for pre-Christian legends on the nature and history of Arda. Explorations of the legendarium from other religious perspectives or explicitly nonreligious perspectives have received less attention, however, as have studies of the reception of Tolkien’s work among (non)religious readers and communities.

Fifty years on from Tolkien’s death, as Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films celebrate their twentieth anniversary and Amazon Prime’s The Rings of Power draws in new fans, Tolkien’s audience has never been wider nor more diverse. This presents Tolkien scholarship with an opportunity to bring varied and underrepresented perspectives on Tolkien and religion into conversation with longstanding currents in the field, thereby enriching our understanding of religious plurality in Tolkien’s secondary world and in our primary world as well.

This seminar welcomes fresh and innovative treatments of the generative interactivity between Tolkien’s fiction, Tolkien’s faith, and the faith (or lack thereof) of the readers who draw deep wells of meaning from his tales of Middle-earth.

Alliterative Verse by Speculative Fiction Authors

Forgotten Ground Regained is designed to make it easy to find, read, and appreciate modern alliterative verse -- the kind of poetry we see in such medieval classics as Beowulf or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. On this site I have collected alliterative verse by a wide range of modern poets -- provided a field guide for poets who want to write their own alliterative poems -- and provided all kinds of information and resources for people who want to study the form.

One of the main ways alliterative verse has spead is throgh the science fiction and fantasy community. Authors have often built worlds in which alliterative verse plays a central role, and in response, fans have taken what their favorite authors have created and run with it. The links on this page provide a panoramic view of the creativity thus unleashed.

Check out the listing of alliterative verse works by speculative fiction and fan authors and the full Forgotten Ground Regained site.

Mythopoeic Society Online MidWinter Seminar: Something Mighty Queer

Join us for a virtual conference centered around queerness in fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction, or other mythopoeic work. “Queerness” is an intentionally ambiguous term, demonstrating the diversity of queer experiences, and the necessity of situating queerness as a liminal, complex paradigm. Queer theory is wider than the study of gender identity or sexuality, extending to taking positions against normativity and dominant modes of thought, and engaging with the indefinite.

The conference will be held February 17-18, 2024 via Zoom and Discord.

Registration is $20 USD. Register here with the Mythopoeic Society's MidWinter Seminar.

A list of presenters for the MidWinter Seminar can be found here.

Hidden Paths 2024

Hidden Paths was created as a low-pressure, low-commitment opportunity to explore the lesser known Tolkien canons (e.g. Sellic Spell, Mr. Bliss, The Notion Club Papers) and create and share fanworks based on them.

The dates will be the same as last year, 14th - 28th Feb, with optional prompts at the start of each week of the event.

For more info on the event and how it works, check out our AO3 collection or our Dreamwidth sticky post.

OC Kiss Week 2024

OC Kiss Week celebrates original characters by having original characters share a kiss of any kind during the week of February 12-18. OC Kiss Week is run on Tumblr.

• What is OCkiss? It’s a week long event in which artists, writers and other creators produce content about OCs kissing.
• Who can participate in OCkiss? Do you have an OC? Do you want to participate in OCkiss? Congrats, you’re in! Create something and upload it during the event with the tag #ockiss24
• My OC doesn’t have a significant other, can I still participate? Of course! OCkiss is not restricted to romantic kisses - they can be friendly, they can be familiar, they can just be kissing their pet!
• Can I use other people’s OCs? If they have stated that their OCs are up for grabs for this event, of course! If you’re not sure, please, please always ask the OC’s owner first.
• I’m a bit lost and don’t know what to create! You can ask other people for prompts, make your own, or follow the official #ockiss24 prompt list (to be released soon!).
• If you have more questions, please refer to the main FAQ!