Around the World and Web includes announcements and items of interest from beyond the SWG.
Week of Kiliel
Welcome to Week of Kiliel!
This event will be held May 17-23! The goal of this week is to celebrate and be creatively inspired by the relationship between Tauriel and Kili Durin! We want to encourage The Hobbit community to make Kiliel art, fanfiction, edits, crafts, and more!
Rules:
• There are prompts for every day to inspire your creativity! You can pick one or multiple from each day, and they can be followed as loosely or as closely as you would like!
• Please use the tag “#week of kiliel” so we can reblog your entries! You can also tag @weekofkiliel! We are so excited to see and support all of your work!
• Late entries are fine, though we ask that you do not post earlier!
• If you have an existing work that fits one of these prompts that you would like to submit, that is fine, but please repost about it with the hashtag on the day it corresponds to! While we accept already existing works, we really want to encourage new Kiliel content as that is one of the goals of Kiliel week!
• NSFW is allowed! While none of the prompts are explicitly NSFW, NSFW is permitted as long as it is properly tagged!
• While the main ship and characters should be Kiliel, background ships and characters are welcome! However, for this event we do not accept Durincest or other incest ships.
NO AI WILL BE PERMITTED FOR THIS EVENT, ANY AI ENTRIES WILL BE UNOFFICIAL AND WILL NOT BE REBLOGGED OR ENDORSED
Prompts
Day 1 - Modern AU, First Kiss, Dating, Fluff
Day 2 - Courting, Erebor Never Fell AU, Wingman, Khuzdul
Day 3 - Sickfic, Poison, Angst, Healing
Day 4 - Mirkwood, Culture Shock, Meetcute, Sindarin
Day 5 - Height Difference, Cuddling, College AU, Bed Sharing
Day 6 - Crossover AU, Fake Dating, Arranged Marriage, Confession
Day 7 - Afterlife, Everybody Lives, Scene Rewrite, Alt First Meeting
Aspec Arda Week 2026
Aspec Arda Week: May 10th-16th, 2026
This event celebrates asexual and aromantic spectrum interpretations and headcanons of Tolkien's Legendarium.
Any creations about the aromantic and asexual spectrums are welcome! You can create edits, gifs, fanart, fanfic, fanmixes, and more! All versions of canon/fanon and characters are included, be it from the books, movies, TV, OCs, etc. Please tag your posts with #aspecardaweek AND @ mention this blog @aspecardaweek so that your work can be easily found. If you are posting your submission to AO3, we will have an event collection! This is not an event for generative AI works.
The prompts below are a guideline for the week’s events, though you are not obligated to stick to them when participating. They’re completely optional, and more of a source of inspiration than a mandatory guideline. Feel free to explore them however you’d like; an explanation for each is given, but you can interpret them differently if you want to.
Day 1 / May 10th: Asexuality || Hope
Day 2 / May 11th: Aromanticism || Community
Day 3 / May 12th: Across the A-Spectrum || Loneliness
Day 4 / May 13th: Worldbuilding || Dragons
Day 5 / May 14th: Relationships || Linguistics
Day 6 / May 15th: Intersectionality || Found Family
Day 7 / May 16th: Freeform
For further clarification, check out our FAQ, code of conduct, and prompts pages! Happy creating!!
Detailed Prompts
DAY ONE: Asexuality
What characters do you see as asexual? Why? How does that impact their lives?
Alternative prompt: Hope
DAY TWO: Aromanticism
What characters do you see as aromantic? Why? How does that impact their lives?
Alternative prompt: Community
DAY THREE: Across the A-Spectrum
“Asexual” and “aromantic” are umbrella terms encapsulating a wide spectrum of identities. From grayromantic to demisexual, and aroace to lithromantic —there are many other labels on the a-spectrum. This is a day for exploring those identities and the characters you associate them with.
Alternative prompt: Loneliness
DAY FOUR: World Building
How does acceptance and prevalence of aspec identity vary over both cultures and species?
Are all elves really baseline demisexual? What’s up with one third of dwarven populations focusing on their craft instead of taking a spouse? How do soul bonds work between elven couples who don’t want to have sex? Did Númenor get aphobic when they started distancing themselves from the Elves? Do aspec hobbits feel pressure to settle down and have large families?
Alternative prompt: Dragons
DAY FIVE: Relationships
Aspec people can have many different kinds of relationships, including romantic and sexual ones— but some kinds of relationships are more unique and common to the aspec communities, such as queerplatonic ones. Today is a day for exploring all these different kinds of relationships!
There are several relationships in Tolkien's works that could easily be read as queerplatonic, including Frodo & Sam, and Legolas & Gimli. There is also an interesting footnote in The Nature of Middle Earth which describes something like a queerplatonic relationship and provides some Quenya words for it.
Alternative prompt: Linguistics - Many of the terms for aspec identity come from root words of Latin, can you postulate translations for aspec terminology in any of Tolkien's languages?
DAY SIX: Intersectionality
There is more to a person’s life than just their orientation. Outside of fantasy species, how does being aspec interact with a character’s other identities and experiences, such as race or disability or religion? What’s the impact of a character’s aspec identity on their gender or other orientation labels? Today is a day for exploring the intersections of the aspec experience with other aspects of identity.
Alternative Prompt: Found Family
DAY SEVEN: Freeform
Post about something aspec related not yet covered in the topics this week, or return to a prompt you have more thoughts about! Alternatively, we have some additional prompts for inspiration that did not quite fit into the other days.
- Recommend a fic, meta post, etc. that includes aspec identity.
- How would a particular character respond to allonormativity / amatanormativity? What kind of amatanormativity / allonormativity have they faced?
- What is a particular character’s relationship with their aspec identity Is it a big part of their life?
- Post about an aspec character’s family, either found family, or blood relations. Does their family support them? Does their family (or society) have expectations of marriage and children of them?
- Post about aspec community (symbols, cultural practices, mentorship and friendship with other aspec characters) within the context a culture within Tolkien's Legendarium, or take a character and post about what parts an aspec community they would resonate with in a modern Earth AU.
Angbang Week 2026
This is the official blog of Angbang (or Melron) week.
We follow the tags "#AngbangWeek" and "#Angbang Week" as well as the current year variations of those tags. We have our ask box and DMs open if you have any questions!
List of prompts for Angbang Week 2026:
- Day 1: First meeting/Reunion
- Day 2: Dating/Intimacy
- Day 3: Competitions/Rivalry
- Day 4: Eyes/Gaze
- Day 5: Letters/Long distance communication
- Day 6: Last day together/Separation
- Day 7: Canon divergence
As always, there are two prompts a day to choose between. You may create any original work you feel relates to the prompt, and if you did not connect with a prompt, feel free to skip it. All previously unposted creations made by you are accepted (fic, art, moodboards, playlists, etc). For any adult content, please keep it below a read more and tag it accordingly.
When posting your works, please post them on the day the prompt appears on or on a later day and tag this blog directly by using @, or add one of the following tags (#angbangweek2026, #angbang week 2026) to your post's tag list so we know the post is for the event. Please note that the event rules have been updated to clarify that we do NOT accept any creations made using Generative AI of any sort, and as such we will not be featuring any such content on this blog. For any questions or further clarifications, feel free to reach out in the asks or DMs. Happy creating and we'll see you in May!
April/May Teitho Challenge
Our prompt for April/May is Heartbreak. There are so many possibilities with this one!
Will you go back to the very beginning with the heartbreak of Melkor’s discord during the creation?
Or will you take us to the time of Miriel and Finwë? Fëanor’s heartbreak at the loss of his mother?And later his father’s death? Or the loss of the Silmarils themselves, that led to so much heartbreak for so many?
The kinslaying. The ship burning. The Helcaraxë. Battle after battle. Betrayal. The heartbreak of The Oath itself.
The death of Fingolfin. Fingon. Finrod. The sons of Fëanor, one after another. The heartbreak of those left behind: Maglor, Galadriel, Elrond.
The tragedy of the House of Hurin.
Or will you come to the time of Celebrimbor—the glory of Eregion and Khazad-Dûm and the devastation that followed? The Last Alliance?
The travails of Frodo. The lonely travels of Aragorn. The heavy weight of duty straining the hearts of both Boromir and Faramir. Eowyn’s heartbreak in Edoras.
The doomed love stories that are woven into Tolkien’s books—Turin, Finduilas, Gwindor, to name a few.
Heartbreak can be so many things—with love, with loss, with changes that shift our entire world. But heartbreak can also be in the small moments—for a child, a parent, a friend, a comrade. It can be momentary or span years. Or even lifetimes.
Will you break our hearts with your stories and art this time? Or will you find a way to heal the heartbreak and find the hope that can endure and persist?
We can’t wait to see what you do with this prompt!
Submissions are due May 31, 2026. Please send them to teitho.contest@gmail.com
Your teitho mods
Sian22, Lotrfan, and Cassie.
Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang 2026
Schedule
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March
1: 2025 Gallery Opens
The Gallery for 2025 is live! Enjoy the beautiful pieces created for last year’s TRSB!
22: Suggestion Form Opens
This form gives potential authors (or anyone else who wants to play!) the opportunity to suggest characters, places and scenarios they would like to see in the submitted art. We will post a link to the form on our Tumblr and here on the website. The answers will feed into a publicly available spreadsheet listing the ideas submitted; artists can peruse this to get inspired!
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April
12: Sign-ups Open
We post links to our sign-up form on all the usual platforms. You can then sign up as an artist, an author, a beta, a cheerleader, a pinch hitter, or as two or more of these. Please see the ‘Sign-ups’ section of the FAQ for more details on what these terms mean.
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May
3: Artist Sign-up Deadline
9: Art Draft Due
Participating art submissions must be sent to the mods by this date to be eligible for the Claims Gallery.
For more details on how to do this, see the ‘Art Submissions’ section of the FAQ. Artists may submit up to two pieces of art, for claiming by two separate authors.10: Discord Server Opens
Come hang out with your fellow participants!
15: Art Previews Open
Our online gallery of art prompts will be visible to signed-up participants only. Signed-up authors can browse the artworks and see which pieces appeal to their muses!
16-17: Discord Art Talks
These are live chats on Discord with mod presence – start times to be announced – where we go through the beautiful gallery and admire the work of our artists. It has been great fun in past years!
20: Author Signups Deadline
23 (Saturday) 17:00 UTC: CLAIMS
Authors submit a ranked list of the artworks they would like to claim to write fic for. Claims are on a first-come, first-served basis. One artwork will be allocated to each claiming author; the mods will email you to confirm which piece you have successfully claimed and how to get in touch with your artist. See the ‘Claims’ section of the FAQ for more information.
TBA – Additional Claims
If any artworks are left unclaimed, we will hold one or more additional claiming rounds as needed. Generally, there will be 24 hours between rounds, but the timing is at the mods’ discretion. The additional round(s) will be announced to signed-up participants by email and on the TRSB Discord.
31: Post-Claims Check-in
The mods will email each artist/author pair to ensure that you have successfully established contact – even if you are not planning on a close collaboration, it is polite to check in with your partner, say hello, and make sure you’re both clear on must-haves and do-not-wants. One person from your pair must respond and confirm that you have done this!
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June
14: Free Rein Art Due
We know some artists like to give their authors as much creative freedom as possible, and we have a dedicated collaboration option for this (see ‘Art Submissions’ FAQs). However, this means we require these artists to share the final art with their authors much earlier than artists who are prepared to be more involved.
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July
12: Check-in #2
The mods will email each pair to ensure everything is on track. One person from your pair must respond – see ‘Check Ins’ in the FAQ.
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August
9: Final Art Due
Artists must share the final art with their authors – but don’t post it yet!
Don’t email it to the mods.16: Final Check-in (#3)
Deadline to abandon your fic to a pinch hitter. There will be no penalty for dropping out on or before this date. This year we ask both collaborators to contact the mods at the final check-in.
The mods will email all participants beforehand to ensure everything is still on track. We will ask you to confirm:
- Whether the art is complete (Artists: did you share it with your author? Authors: have you seen the final art?)
- Whether you have discussed posting logistics (ie, have you talked about how the art will be posted (embedded and/or posted separately to the collection), who will handle promo posting, any specific posting needs)
26: Art Can Be Posted
Artworks can be posted to your preferred platform on or after this date (but before they are due in the collection). Hype your collab wherever you like and get the excitement going! Artists should ensure that their author has received a link to the art for embedding or linking in the finished fic as agreed upon before August 30th (deadline for posting the fic to the collection).
30: Fic Due In Collection
Authors should post their stories in our AO3 collection with the artwork embedded or linked. See the “Posting fic” section of our FAQ.
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September
5: COLLECTION REVEALS
Around the World and Web Archive
Events listed here are no longer active but are listed on the site for historical purposes.
Silvergifting Week 2023
Silvergifting Week will happen on Tumblr August 7-13, 2023!
This is the second year of the week-long event that celebrates the relationship between Celebrimbor and Mairon | Annatar | Sauron. The event wants to encourage people to create fanworks focused on Celebrimbor/Mairon pairing (including Celebrimbor/Annatar and Celebrimbor/Sauron). Fan art, fan fiction, headcanon, moodboards, fan crafts, cosplay, fan videos, meta ... all kinds of fan works are welcome!
This year, there are optional word prompts for days 1-5 you can use in addition to the main prompts.
List of prompts
Day 1 (August 7): Beginnings | First Meetings
Optional word prompt for Day 1: Delicious meal
Day 2 (August 8): Crafting | Community
Optional word prompt for Day 2: Curious cat
Day 3 (August 9): Soulmates | Marriage | Bonding
Optional word prompt for Day 3: Beautiful gift
Day 4 (August 10): Betrayal | Captured | Bad Ending
Optional word prompt for Day 4: Corrupting touch
Day 5 (August 11): Post-canon | New beginnings
Optional word prompt for Day 5: Nimble fingers
Day 6 (August 12): Canon divergence | Alternate universe
Day 7 (August 13): Freeform
Tolkien of Colour Week 2023
Tolkien of Colour Week will run 31 July - 6 August 2023 on Tumblr and AO3.
Any form of content is welcome. Tag @tolkienofcolourweek in your post and #tocweek2023.
This year there is a Ao3 collection!
The prompts below are only suggestions. There are two sets of prompts - Peoples | Themes. You can use both sets of prompts or just one.
Day 1: Ainur | Faith, Hope, Festivals
Day 2: Elves | Home, Lands, Journeys
Day 3: Men | Ancestors/Descendants, Tradition, Stories
Day 4: Dwarves | Music, Artwork, Clothing
Day 5: Hobbits | Family, Friendship, Romance
Day 6: Mixed | Community, Language, Belonging
Day 7: Freeform | Intersectionality, Sexuality, Gender, Intersex, Disability
Call for Papers: 2024 Kalamazoo Congress
The 59th International Congress on Medieval Studies will be held in a hybrid format, Thursday through Saturday, 9-11 May 2024) at Western Michigan University. Six sessions on Tolkien are offered this year. Note that some sessions are in-person and others are virtual.
- Tolkien's Leeds Legacy: A Reconsideration of His Work as a Medievalist (In-person)
- Tolkien and "The Battle of Maldon" (In-person)
- Tolkien’s Problematic Medievalisms, A Roundtable (In-person)
- Flora, Fauna & Fantasy: Medieval Poets and J.R.R. Tolkien, co-sponsored with the Pearl Poet Society. (Virtual)
- Here Be Dragons: Tolkien at the Medieval Margins (co-sponsored with Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic, University of Glasgow: Virtual)
- Tolkien and Disability (co-sponsored with Society for the Study of Disability in the Middle Ages: Virtual)
Proposals are due by 15 September 2023.
Multifandom Poetry Fest 2023
Welcome to the seventh annual Multifandom Poetry Fest, a prompt fest for poetry for all fandoms!
Rules
1) Leave a prompt in the form of fandom, characters or relationships, prompt. If you don’t want to specify the fandom or characters, you can say "any." One prompt per comment. Leave as many prompts as you like.
2) Reply to other people’s prompts with poems. The poems can be any length or form, or no form. Quality isn’t important--the point is to have fun, not to produce deathless works of art. (Any deathless works of art produced are just a bonus.)
LotR Ladies Week 2023
LotR Ladies Week will be a week-long event hosted on Tumblr, in order to celebrate the female characters in and around J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. The event will run 17-23 July 2023.
We welcome all forms of fan creations centered around the women in the series: be it fics, fanart, edits, gifs, fanmixes, or whatever else you’d like to make!
Guidelines
- Tag your posts with #lotrladiesweek and mention @lotrladiessource
- We’re focusing on female characters from The Lord of the Rings itself & ones with connections to it, such as Second Age characters like Tar-Miriel, and characters from The Hobbit like Belladonna Took. There are many other amazing women from The Silmarillion and such, but this is the LotR ladies' chance to shine!
- Fanwork of all kind is welcome--art, fanfic, gifsets, graphic/aesthetic edits, fanmixes, headcanons, crafts, anything!
- Per our usual policy, we will not reblog NSFW content.
- Bigotry of any kind will not be tolerated.
Prompts
(Note: the prompts are completely non-mandatory and can be mixed and matched however you would like to use them! They’re just meant to provide a range of creative inspiration and you don’t have to use them at all!)
- Day 1: Hobbits | Warm colours | Resilience | Music/Lyrics | Fairytales & Legends
- Day 2: Women of the North | Cool colours | Love | Minimalism | Family
- Day 3: Dwarrowdams | Monochrome | Joy | Motifs | Language
- Day 4: Women of the South | Black & white | Courage | Typography | Parallels
- Day 5: Elves | Pastels | Grief | Portraits | Archetypes
- Day 6: Original Characters | Complementary Colours | Anger | Faceless | Textual ghosts
- Day 7: Freeform | Multicolour | Hope | Blending | Alternate Universes
Tolkien Pinup Calendar 2024
The Tolkien Pinup Calendar compiles a calendar of risque fanart of your favourite Tolkien characters! Most of the art is commissioned and in that way we are helping to support fan artists. There are other ways to participate, see the ‘roles’ section under FAQ.
In addition to the calendar, Main Commissioners can also submit fics inspired by the art! There will be an AO3 collection with the fics revealed at the end of the event.
Sign-ups are now open for main commissioners, artists, and donators!
To submit any ideas or view those others suggested, take a look at our Ideas Form post!
Frequently Asked Questions
Schedule
2023 Masterlist | Video | Downloadable Calendar for 2023
This is an 18+ event.
Just Leave a Comment Fest 2023
Just Leave a Comment Fest will run on Tumblr from 10-14 July 2023 with the objective of leaving as many comments during that time as possible. Daily themes are below but do not have to be used; the purpose is to rack up as many comments as possible.
Themes:
July 10: Old Fics/New Fics
July 11: <2K Words
July 12: AUs
July 13: Rarepair/Platonic
July 14: Surprise Flavor!
Post your totals at the end of the week using the tag #justleaveacomment.
July Challenge at tolkienshortfworks (Dreamwidth)
The July Challenge for tolkienshortfanworks on Dreamwidth has been posted.
The thematic challenge is:
a contrast in temperature, such as: hot/cold, sweltering/freezing, fire/ice, etc.
The formal challenge is:
news.
How does current news spread in Middle-earth?
Is it sung by bards and minstrels? Are there town criers? Are there broadsheets in large cities? Do military or administrative subordinates make regular reports?
Alternatively, can you imagine Valinorean radio or podcasts? A Fourth-Age website?
These prompts can be filled separately and freely combined with other challenges.
More details on the tolkienshortfanworks challenges at the linked Dreamwidth community post.
New participants welcome.
Interchanging Melodies: Online Summit on Tolkien and Religion
Interchanging Melodies aims to bring together diverse (a)religious voices to dialogue, lecture, and reflect on Tolkien's theology, his religious outlook, and (a)religious engagement with Tolkien from scholars and fans. The featured speakers will engage with topics from Tolkien from atheist/agnostic/animist perspectives to Tolkien and spiritual direction.You will have access to pre-recorded and live talks and interviews with Tolkien aficianados, where you can engage with them, ask the big questions about Tolkien, and incorporate these engagements into your own Tolkien experience.
Everyone will have access to lectures and interviews from ten notable Tolkien scholars that you can watch live or at your own pace. We will host online spaces where you can nerd out with other Tolkienists, ask speakers questions, and discover where you can interact with the featured Tolkien scholars' ongoing work.
Registration is donation-based, which can be free if that is what you can afford.
The complete Interchanging Melodies speaker list, schedule, and sign-up form can be found here.
Tolkien Gen Week 2023
This is a week to appreciate all of the incredible characters and relationships within Tolkien’s legendarium that fall under the broad category of “gen.” There is a great wealth of wonderful gen content in the Tolkien fandom, but those creations are not always the most visible because of the shipping-focused nature of fandom at large. This week is an effort to give them the appreciation they deserve.
Tolkien Gen Week began in 2018 and occurred again in 2020, 2021, and 2022, and we’re back for more from July 4-10, 2023!
Any content and creations are welcome as long as it is non-romantic and non-sexual! You can create edits, gifs, fanart, fanfic, fanmixes, and more! Please tag your posts with #tolkiengenweek AND @ mention this blog @tolkiengenweek so they can be easily found. If your submission turns into a long post, please put what you can beneath a “Keep reading” divider. You may also post your creations to our AO3 collection.
Below are some prompts for each day of the week. They are not mandatory, but they are here to inspire you. This post will lead to an explanation for each one.
- DAY ONE: Family ● Mentorships ● Community
- DAY TWO: Friendship ● Animals ● Group Dynamic
- DAY THREE: Gray Spaces ● Enemies and Rivalries ● Fealty
- DAY FOUR: Solo ● Work and Craft ● Language
- DAY FIVE: Culture ● Diversity ● Traditions
- DAY SIX: Environment ● Places ● Objects and Symbols
- DAY SEVEN: Freeform
This event is being organized by @arofili. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to message this blog or my main.
For further clarification, check out our about, FAQ, code of conduct, and prompts pages! Happy creating!!