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.
December challenge at tolkienshortfanworks on Dreamwidth
The December challenge at tolkienshortfanworks on Dreamwidth is a prompt amnesty: fill any previous prompt or finish and post previous prompt fills. New participants always welcome. More details at the linked posts.
Here Be Dragons Exchange 2023
Hello, and welcome to the Here Be Dragons Multifandom Exchange! We're here to celebrate dragons through art and fic (1000 words or a finished piece of art, of any rating). All sorts of dragons are welcome, including dragons from various cultural traditions, original dragons, and dragons from any fandom.
As this is a dragon exchange, all stories must include a dragon! We've elaborated on eligible dragons below, but if you have any questions about the eligibility of a specific dragon please feel free to ask. Comments are unscreened.
Nominations are currently open at the tag set!
Quick Links: 2023 Collection | Tag Set | Evidence Post
Schedule:
November 29–December 4: Nominations
December 4–5: Nominations Cleanup
December 6–December 18: Signups
December 20: Assignments Out By This Date
January 22: Assignments Due
February 3: Work Reveals
February 12: Creator Reveals
*all due dates/reveals are at 11:59 PM EST unless otherwise noted
See the Here Be Dragons 2023 Rules & Info for full exchange guidelines!
Khazad Week 2022
Khazad Week is a Tumblr event all about celebrating Tolkien’s dwarves through your transformative work! Art, fic, edits, playlists, headcanons, moodboards and anything else you can think of are all welcome. To spark your imagination we’ve put together the following prompts, which you can choose to combine or use how you like. They are not mandatory—it’s all for fun! Since there are so few dwarves mentioned in canon, OCs are very welcome for every day. Still, at least one prompt each day fits our canon dwarves. Any content is welcome!
5th December: First age // Family // Longbeards
6th December: Second age // Diplomacy // Firebeards
7th December: Petty-dwarves // Courtship // Broadbeams
8th December: Khazad-dûm // Dwarrowdams // Ironfists
9th December: Erebor // Environment // Stiffbeards
10th December: Music // Religion and Spirituality // Blacklocks
11th December: Folklore and Myths // Diversity // Stonefoots
Further explanation of the Khazad Week prompts can be found here.
We will be tracking the tag #khazadweek throughout the week and beyond, though Tumblr’s tagging system being what it is, you may also want to @ this blog in your post to ensure that we see it!
Fandomtrees 2022 Sign-Ups Open
Fandomtrees is a mulitfandom gifting fest. Participants sign up with information about the fandoms, prompts, etc, they want, as well as any DNWs. Other people will then leave gifts under the trees, and the mod(s) will reveal those on the reveal date.
Schedule: (Updated schedule for 2022)
Sign-ups: November 17 - December 7
Gifting: November 19 - January 4
Reveals: January 5
Important Links:
Rules/FAQ
Sign-Up Post
AO3 Collection
Tolkien Latin America Week 2022
Tolkien Latin America Week will be a week dedicated to celebrate Latin American cultures, peoples and traditions through Tolkien’s Legendarium. I started my series of Tolkien, but make it latino a while ago and it inspired me to create this event. The event will be held on Tumblr.
It will start on November 21st (Monday) at 00:00 Brasilia time (what time is it in my country?). The week will end on November 27th, but feel free to post after the week is over. I’ll still check tags, mentions and submissions for a while.
Everyone is free to participate, you don’t have to be latino nor have deep knowledge about Latin America to celebrate this event. This is also a great opportunity for you to learn more about this region.
All creations are welcome - arts, graphics, gifs, fanfics, etc. - as long as they represent a Latin American element(s). It can be languages, cultures, traditions, anything from Latin America. Creations should be Safe for Work, no explicit content will be accepted to make this week accessible to everyone.
Please tag your contributions with #tolkienlatamweek and mention me @tolkienlatamweek.
Here are the prompts! They are not mandatory, but they can inspire you. Feel free to create outside these themes.
- Day 1 (November 21st): Valar | Festivals | Clothes | Traditions
- Day 2 (November 22nd): Maiar | Places | Nature
- Day 3 (November 23rd): Elves | Dances | Songs
- Day 4 (November 24th): Dwarves | Religious diversity | Languages | Foods
- Day 5 (November 25th): Men | Immigration | Migration | Cultural Diversity
- Day 6 (November 26th): Hobbits | Folklore | Stories | Tales | Superstitions
- Day 7 (November 27th): Freeform | OCs | Diversity (can be sexual orientation, gender, disability, neurodiversity or race)
German Tolkien Society: Pocast Interview with Brian Sibley
Brian Sibley is the editor of the new volume "The Fall of Númenor" and granted an interview about his work on the book to the German Tolkien Society as part of their Tolkien Podcast. The interview includes how this book came to be, what’s in it (and what’s not), how Brian Sibley became a detective in the Second Age and what Alan Lee had to do with all that.
Tolkien Secret Santa 2022 sign-ups open
The Tolkien Secret Santa 2022 sign-ups are now open on Tumblr.
Sign-ups will be open from November 7 through November 21.
Mods Fern, RC, Fea, Anna, and UE write in the announcement:
This event is an exchange of small digital gifts: you sign up and mention what you’d like to create and to receive, and we’ll match you with fellow Tolkien fans who’d like those kinds of gifts! You can read more about Tolkien Secret Santa at our event guide here, and there’s a mobile-friendly list of links here.
Also as in recent years, we have both the main gift exchange and two concurrent Advent Calendars. The Advent Calendars are when participants sign up to make bite-sized gifts, two of which will be posted each day for the first part of December. Read more about this optional part of the event here!
It is very exciting for us to be returning for a sixth year of Tolkien Secret Santa, and we are delighted to welcome both new and returning participants! We hope this event will bring you much joy, creativity, and community in a holiday spirit.
Survey: Asexuality and Aromanticism in Fanfiction
Sidney Garner, a Masters student at the University of Texas at Austin, seeks participants for a survey study about aromantic and asexual fanfiction and how those authors engage with the canon. You do not need to be on the aromantic or asexual spectrum yourself, only write characters in your fanfiction who are. You must be over 18 years of age to participate. Find out more details about participating in the study here.
The Lord of the Rings Secret Santa 2022 Prompt Meme Sign-Ups Are Open
The Lord of the Rings Secret Santa 2022 Prompt Meme sign-ups are open.
Time to sign up for the Lord of the Rings Secret Santa exchange! Slash, femslash, het and gen, fic and fanart; you can request it all.
Lord of the Rings Secret Santa started as a traditional exchange and has been running as a prompt meme since 2020.
This year's timeline (2022):
- Prompt Posting: November 1st to 30th.
- Claiming: December 1st to 31st.
- Collection Open for Posting: December 1st to 31st
- All Fills Due: December 31st.
You will be able to post up to 2 prompts, and the mods will do their best to make sure that at least one of your prompts is filled.
Please note that this is an FPF challenge. (i.e. Fictional, not real people fiction/RPF.) The challenge is open to all the Peoples and Ages of Middle-earth!
Admin posts are made to the Dreamwidth community and can also be followed on Tumblr.
Fills are posted to the collection on AO3.
More details at the linked post.
November challenge at the tolkienshortfanworks community (Dreamwidth)
The November challenge prompts have been posted to the tolkienshortfanworks community on Dreamwidth.
Here is our thematic prompt and our formal challenge for November:
The thematic prompt is: "spooky" or "eerie".
The formal challenge is "children's or nursery rhyme".
As always, the two prompts can be filled independently, if you wish, or combined with prompts from other challenges.
New participants welcome!
More details on the challenge in the linked post.