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.
Online Class: Tolkien's Time Travel Stories
J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lost Road sends characters from his contemporary England back into the past of his Middle-earth. This class will feature J.R.R. Tolkien's two little-known, unfinished time-travel stories. The Lost Road sends characters from his contemporary England dreaming their way back into the storm-haunted past of Númenor. The Notion Club Papers brings the same storm into the present to blow through an Inklings-like gathering of Oxford dons, carrying with it wind, rain, ancient identities and a new language.
This class will feature two experts in their fields—Verlyn Flieger, Tolkien expert, and Carl F. Hostetter, the editor of The Nature of Middle-earth. Carl will join the June 25th class.
Schedule: Four Sundays: June 4, 11, 18, 25 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. ET, online
- June 4—Flieger: Lost Road
- June 11—Flieger: Notion Club Papers Pt. 1
- June 18—Flieger: Notion Club Papers Pt. II.
- June 25*—Hostetter & Flieger: The Drowning of Anaduné
Price: $130.00 Per Person (10% off for members)
Class format: Lecture and discussion. Questions encouraged, opinions invited.
The class text is The History of Middle-earth, Volume IX: Sauron Defeated.
Mythmoot X: Homeward Bound (June 22-25)
Mythmoot annual conference brings together students, fans, staff, and friends of Signum University, the Mythgard Institute, Signum SPACE, and Signum Academy. Our online and in-person completely hybrid event combines the best of scholarship and friendship in four glorious days. The event will be held 22-25 June 2023, with the in-person event hosted at the National Conference Center in Leesburg, VA. This year's theme is Homeward Bound:
Homes, in their absence, their presence, their construction or destruction, play integral roles in character and plot development across genres. One writer’s definition of home can directly contrast another’s. Home is a complex, loaded word in the stories we read and tell. The phrase ‘homeward bound’ contains a wealth of meaning. Home can be the place we are coming from, the place we are going, or both. Is home a positive thing? Negative? A net neutral? Is there a home to be headed towards in every story? Is there more than one? Does home change? Is home a place, a person, a feeling? What does home mean in the stories we tell and why does it change and matter?
Guests of Honor: Sørina Higgins, PhD, and Gabriel Schenk, DPhil
Silm Remix 2023
A remix is a retelling of an existing work. The idea is to retain the spirit of the story, while creating a new work of your own in a different manner or style. In this remix challenge, we’re offering the chance to remix someone's story, and to have one of your own stories remixed. A remix challenge is a great opportunity to flex some creative muscles and celebrate how transformative and collaborative fandom can be!
Rules
You must be 18 years or older to sign up for this event.
For this round of the event, only Silmarillion fanfiction is eligible for remixing.
At the end of the event, you will have produced a fanfiction of at least 1000 words that remixes one of your author’s offered stories. You will also receive a remix of one of your own offered works that is at least 1000 words.
This is a gift exchange, albeit a nontraditional one, and as such you will be remixing a work into something you hope your author will enjoy!
Find more information on the rules, including FAQs, on the Silm Remix AO3 collection.
Schedule
Signups: April 8 - 14 (at 11:59pm PDT)
Assignments out by: April 17
Default deadline: May 8
Due date: May 15 (at 11:59 PDT)
Work reveals: May 22
Creator reveals: May 29
For more information: Tumblr | AO3 Collection
Teitho April/May Challenge: Crossroads
As we indicated earlier in the month, your mods are finding themselves at a Crossroads, wanting to keep the contest going but wondering if the lack of participation means it’s time to change course, or even end the journey. So we thought that would be an appropriate theme for April and May.
A crossroad is often used as a symbol of a choice needing to be made, which is the use we had in mind when choosing this challenge. Which road should the traveler follow? Should they keep going straight, continuing on the way they’ve been going? Or should they turn and follow a new direction? The Quendi faced this type of choice when Orome invited them to travel from Cuiviénen to Valinor, and they had to choose between their beloved stars and the light of the trees.
Towns would often spring up around a crossroad where two important roads met, as Bree did at the crossroad of the Great East Road and the Greenway. They became a destination in their own right, or a place for travelers to meet and organize their party before traveling on, as Frodo hoped to find Gandalf waiting at the Prancing Pony.
A crossroad can also be used as a landmark, such as when giving directions, or a place of distinction. The crossroad east of Minas Tirith served as a delimitation between North and South Ithilien.
Whether you choose to use a physical crossroad or a symbolic one, we hope that you’ll choose to share whatever journey you create for your characters with us! Submissions should be emailed to teitho.contest@gmail.com by May 31. Full contest guidelines can be found here.
Free Seminar: Celtic Connections in J.R.R. Tolkien’s "The Silmarillion"
The Silmarillion is the lifelong work of JRR Tolkien, author and professor dedicated to exploring the truths fantasy and myth could present. In this presentation, we’ll dive into the influence Celtic culture plays in the languages, characters, and stories of The Silmarillion.
April 17 at 7:30-8:30 pm CST.
Registration is required. You can register for this free event here.
You will receive a Zoom meeting link from instructor Ryan Quinn on the day of the class.
Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang: Suggestion Form 2023
Got a precious rare pair you want to see depicted? Insufficient Second Age content for your liking? Want to get someone else interested in a lesser known canon you love? This is your chance to influence the pieces available for claiming!
The TRSB Suggestion Form of 2023 is now officially live!
If you just want to snoop at the suggestions, here’s the suggestions form spreadsheet.
Aralas Week 2023
Aralas Week focuses on the Aragorn/Legolas pairing and is held on Tumblr and AO3. The event will run over seven days from April 8 to April 14. Everyone is welcome!
Prompts & Suggestions
Day 1: Crown | Leaves
Suggestion
- heirs and legacy
- woodland and everything in it
Day 2: Sword | Bow/Archer
Suggestion
- battle and blade
- strength and courage
Day 3: Whimsical | Magnificent
Suggestion
- beauty inside everything
- affection and adoration
Day 4: Hope | Desire
Suggestion
- wish and belonging
- heart and mind
- duty and honor
Day 5: Heaven | Ocean
Suggestion
- skyborne, flying
- comfort and healing
Day 6: Luminous | Stars
Suggestion
- flame and shine
- starlight, elfstone
Day 7: Spring | Eternity
Suggestion
- new age
- glory and victory
- eternal and infinity
The hashtag is #aralasweek2023 #aralasweek
Tolkienshortfanworks Challenge for April
The April challenge at the tolkienshortfanworks community on Dreamwidth has been posted. This time it involves the use of one or more pair of words in your piece.
Here are four pairs of rhyming words: rabbit / habit; eggs / legs; daffodil / codicil; bun / run. Your challenge is to pick one or more of these pairs and use both words of the pair in your prompt fill. Although the words rhyme, they do not need to be used as rhymes (that is: they don't need to be at the end of rhyming lines of verse) to fill the prompt. Perhaps you are spotting that these word pairs were originally inspired by thoughts of Easter, but your piece does not need to be seasonal in any way. Bonus points if you get in more than one pair of words or come up with a way to get mileage out of the rhyme, especially if it is in an unexpected way!
More details these monthly challenges at the linked post.
New participants always welcome!
Barduil Month 2023
Barduil Month is a month-long celebration and creation event on Tumblr for the Thranduil/Bard the Bowman ship from The Hobbit, loosely inspired by 30 Days of Barduil. We accept all canons (the Peter Jackson movies, Tolkien’s book, and others) as well as any alternate universe and canon divergence possibilities–let your creativity run wild! The event runs 1 April through 30 April 2023.
Any content and fanwork about Barduil is welcome! You can create fic, art, gifsets, edits, playlists, cosplays, crafts, and anything else. Please tag your posts with #barduilmonth2023 and tag this blog, @bi-widower-dads, so they can be found. For courtesy purposes, please have a “read more” on longer posts.
At this link you can find a list of prompts to help get the creative juices flowing, though don’t feel obligated to necessarily abide by them!
Here you can find the AO3 collection for this event.
For further information, please check our F.A.Q. post.
Teitho: February/March Photo Challenge
Choose from two photos for the February/March contest prompt. Could the hands holding the sword be those of a new Rider of Rohan while he listens to the voice of his trainer? Or perhaps a ranger of the Ithilien, taking a moment to rest and to thank the Valar for keeping him safe during a fierce skirmish with enemies headed to Mordor?
Whichever picture captures your imagination, we look forward to reading the stories that these pictures evoke in your mind! Please submit them to teitho.contest@gmail.com on or before March 31.
