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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

Information & Guidelines

AO3 Collection

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.

You can find out more about the Teitho contest here.

All of Arda Is Autistic 2023

All of Arda Is Autistic is a month-long fanfiction event on Tumblr for neurodivergent fans celebrating neurodivergent headcanons of Tolkien's characters. The event runs from 1 April to 30 April, which is Autism Acceptance Month. All Tolkien fans who fit somewhere under the neurodivergent umbrella (self-diagnosed or clinically diagnosed, it doesn't matter) are welcome to participate. This event is during Autism Acceptance Month, but allistic neurodivergents are totally welcome to join as well! Neurotypicals, feel free to support the event and enjoy the stories!

Event Rules
FAQ

Official tags for the event are #all-of-arda-is-autistic and #all of arda is autistic 2023.

Tolkien Ekphrasis Week 2023

Ekphrasis: the description or interpretation of a piece of art, usually visual, in a different artistic medium.

Material culture and art add vibrancy to our lives, and it seems that there are so many options in Middle-earth ripe for interpretation! A poem on Nerdanel's statues, a tapestry capturing Nessa's dance, a prose fic describing the impact of seeing Númenor's frescoes, a painting exploring the beautiful quotidian architecture of a Hobbit hole ...

This is a Tolkien-fandom-wide event dedicated to the art of ekphrasis in Tolkien's worlds. Its goal is to illuminate the artistic surroundings of the places, people, and stories we love, in as many media as possible. As such, fanworks are welcome to take almost any form: see the FAQ for the full list!

The prompts are multi-part. The first part of the prompt is mandatory, describing the kind of art to be interpreted. The subsequent parts are optional thematic, formal, or visual add-ons that people may choose to incorporate or not.

For example: "Day N. Art form: Metalwork. Formal prompt (writing): Epistolary format. Formal prompt (visual art): Mixed media. Thematic prompt: Trade and cross-cultural connection."

If you miss the day, or are desperate to create work about some form of art not included in the prompts, don't worry! Posting amnesty/prompt free-for-all day will be June 17, and posting here and in the AO3 Collection will be open for a year from June 10, 2023.

How It Works

Prompts are currently being posted! Participants will have slightly more than two months to create whatever sort of art they like inspired by one or more of those prompts. Then, no later than June 9, 5 PM PST, they will post their works to the AO3 Collection (linked above), tagged with the appropriate day. The mod will do a quick check, and then the week of reveals will begin. During the week of June 10-June 16, pre-posted fanworks will be revealed daily according to theme (see calendar) in the AO3 Collection and reblogged on Tumblr. On June 17, anyone who missed the deadline will have an opportunity to post their late works and have them celebrated on Amnesty Day.

In short, the timeline is:
- Read prompts starting March 22.
- Create!
- Post tagged work to AO3 before June 9 deadline.
- Enjoy daily reveals between June 10 and June 16.
- Amnesty day June 17 for late posters.

Inclusion

Tolkien Ekphrasis Week is open to all characters, genres, and ratings, and all Tolkien canons. This includes books, movies both live-action and animated, fan-made films like Born of Hope, TV shows that have aired (so yes to Rings of Power, no to the yet-unreleased Rohan animated series), and game canons such as Lord of the Rings Online. It also includes Tolkien's non-Arda works, such as Roverandom. Crossovers between two or more Tolkien canons are welcome.

Tolkien Ekphrasis Week wants to be as inclusive as possible. As such:

• All canons and versions of canon are equally welcome and encouraged to participate.
• Fan creators of all levels of experience should feel more than welcome to join in the fun.
• All languages are welcomed, and works in languages other than English are actively encouraged.
• All styles of art and all types of fic are permitted. Apart from following the Art Form content prompt for each day, there are no restrictions on genre, style, rating, or ship. There is one exception: no character bashing.

Above all, this event is supposed to get us thinking and feeling about art, which is for everyone. With this in mind, TEW asks participants to be respectful and inclusive at all times. In particular, TEW values its queer and trans participants and participants of color and will moderate as necessary to ensure that this event remains a welcoming space.

Please see the FAQ for full instructions on how to post and tag.

Calendar

June 9: Submit all works to the AO3 Collection

June 10-16, 2023: Reveals

• June 10 - AO3 collection reveals begin with Day 1 Prompt (Textiles and Fashion)
• June 11 - Day 2 Prompt (Lutherie and Instrument-Making)
• June 12 - Day 3 Prompt (Dance)
• June 13 - Day 4 Prompt (Gardening and Landscape Architecture)
• June 14 - Day 5 Prompt (Music)
• June 15 - Day 6 Prompt (Calligraphy)
• June 16 - Day 7 Prompt (In-Universe Religious and Devotional Art)
• June 17 - Amnesty Day and Free-for-all posting

June 18, 2023: Tumblr Queue begins posting tagged works.

June 9, 2024: AO3 Collection and DW community close to posting.

Housekeeping

The DW site is the primary home of Tolkien Ekphrasis Week 2023: this is where to check first for dates, news, FAQs, links, and prompts!

Prompts will also be posted on Tumblr. The Tumblr blog will be used for event promotion ahead of the event, answering questions via the ask function, and reblogging your creations, if they are posted and tagged on Tumblr.

This event does not and will not exist on any other form of social media other than Tumblr and DW, though I encourage you to spread the word in your other online communities.

Links

Tumblr Blog | Dreamwidth Community | AO3 Collection | FAQ

Polyship Week 2023

Polyship Week offers prompts for all fanwork types that focus on polyamorous characters and relationships. The event runs 16-22 April 2023.

• Works featuring polyamorous characters and relationships of all kind are welcome — any characters, ships, fandoms, and OCs too!
• Works may be in any medium — fic, art, gifsets, podfic, vids, and more!
• Participate in as few or as many days as you like. Choose your favorite prompt each day or mash them up — whatever sparks your imagination!
• Please tag us @PolyshipWeek or use the hashtag #PolyshipWeek23 so we can reblog your creations! Artists, please also remember to tag or link to the OP as requested for the art memes when you post. :)

Ao3 Collection | carrd | Twitter | Tumblr