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.
Screw Yule 2022
Everyone is cordially invited to participate in this year's Screw Yule, a celebration of Elves, Smut, and a New Year's Resolution to toss Laws and Customs right out the window (or, at least, ignore whatever is necessary to appease your muses.)
What is Screw Yule? Screw Yule started in 2005 as the smuttiest writing and art challenge around, and is still going strong in its 17th season. It's a chance to start the year nice with some naughty elves (and friends), with a focus on populating the fandom with rare pair goodness.
R+ ratings encouraged, but lower ratings are still accepted.
January 1st through January 20th.
Pairing prompts, sassy bingo cards, kinky playlist..
Runs on AO3; for rules and FAQs see collection profile.
B2MEM 2022: Mathom Marketplace
Offer Prompts from January 1 to February 15
Create Works from March 1 through April 15.
In the Michel Delving Market, Hobbits (and big folk alike) can offer ‘prompts for sale’ for ‘prompts for trade’. Shoppers (participants) at the Mathom Marketplace earn mathoms when they offer up prompts for sale, which can be ‘spent’ to acquire prompts from others (or their own!)
The number of people who can ‘buy’ a prompt for sale is limitless – let’s say that Petunia Took offers up ‘An adventure on the Buckleberry Ferry’ as a prompt for sale, and both Gertrude Goodbody and Wylde Thyme wanted to ‘purchase’ that prompt. So long as Gertrude and Wylde each have the mathoms to trade for it, they can each claim the prompt.
Gertrude and Wylde could also combine their mathoms, and spend only one together instead of one each to buy the prompt – the catch is, whatever is created needs to be a collaborative effort between them!
How does one ‘earn’ mathoms? By offering prompts! Everyone starts off with a generous donation from Postmaster Proudfoot of mathoms lost in the mail–he wagers he has enough in the unclaimed mathoms room of the post in Michel Delving for everyone participating to start with five (5) mathoms regardless of whether or not they have anything to offer at the market. The more you offer, the more you earn!
More details, rules, FAQs at the linked Google Doc, which also has the links to the AO3 collections, etc.
My Slashy Valentine sign-ups open
My Slashy Valentine is a hand matched slash fiction exchange focused on the people of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth.
Sign ups are now OPEN so spread the word, recruit your friends and fellow authors, and get ready for MSV 2022.
Sign-up Period: December 8th to December 22nd
Assignments distributed: by December 29th
Deadline for first time participants: January 31st, 2022
Deadline for veteran participants: February 7th, 2022
Archive opens: February 14th, 2022
Admin posts on Tumblr, Dreamwidth, Livejournal; stories to be posted to AO3.
Link to sign-up form in the linked post, together with rules and FAQ
December challenge at tolkienshortfanworks (on Dreamwidth)
December at tolkienshortfanworks is an amnesty month for all the previous monthly challenges posted to the community.
New joiners to the Dreamwidth community are always welcome!
More details plus a list of all the challenges at the linked post.
Sign-ups for Tolkien Secret Santa 2021 (on Tumblr) are open
The Tolkien Secret Santa sign ups for the main event are open till November 20th (on Tumblr). The closing date for sign-ups to the Advent Calendar companion event is 11 November.
TSS is a digital gift exchange, where Tolkien fans sign up to make and receive small winter-themed gifts.
More details and links to instructions, etc. at the linked post.
The LOTR SeSa prompt meme is now open for sign-up and posting prompts
The LOTR Sesa exchange is running in the form of prompt meme this year.
Timeline (2021):
- Prompt Posting: November 1st to 30th.
- Claiming: December 1st to 22nd.
- Collection Open for Posting: December 1st to 31st
- All Fills Due: December 31st.
Open to all the Peoples and Ages of Middle-earth (Fictional persons only, no RPF).
The prompt meme runs on AO3. Admin announcements are posted to Dreamwidth, Livejournal and Tumblr.
More details and links in the linked post.
November Challenge at tolkienshortfanworks posted
The November Challenge at the tolkienshortfanworks community on Dreamwidth has been posted. (New members are always very welcome to join the community.)
The thematic prompt is Poppy.
The formal challenge is to write an elegy, either in the narrower sense of a poem of mourning and memorial for the dead or in the wider sense of a poem of serious or melancholy reflection.
These prompts can be filled independently.
(For bonus quotation prompts and more details on the challenges, see the linked Dreamwidth post.)
"Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien" to Be Republished
This collection of pictures, with a text by Christopher Tolkien, now reissued after almost 30 years confirms J.R.R. Tolkien’s considerable talent as an artist. It provides fascinating insight into his visual conception of many of the places and events familiar to readers of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion.
Examples of his art range from delicate watercolours depicting Rivendell, the Forest of Lothlorien, Smaug, and Old Man Willow, to drawings and sketches of Moria Gate and Minas Tirith. Together they form a comprehensive collection of Tolkien’s own illustrations for his most popular books.
Also included are many of his beautiful designs showing patterns of flowers and trees, friezes, tapestries and heraldic devices associated with the world of Middle-earth. In their variety and scope they provide abundant visual evidence of the richness of his imagination.
This enchanting gallery was personally selected by Christopher Tolkien who, through detailed notes on the sources for each picture, provides unique insight into the artistic vision of his father, J.R.R. Tolkien. Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien goes on sale 11 November 2021 for a price of £25.00.
Preorder Pictures by J.R.R. Tolkien on the HarperCollins website.
Holly Poly Sign-Ups Open October 22-31
Holly Poly is, as the name implies, an exchange for polyamorous relationships. OT3s, OT4s, OT6s, orgies, open relationships, sedoretus, whatever strikes your fancy, as long as it involves three or more entities. Participants are able to offer and request fanart, fanfiction, fanvids, or podfic. Sign-ups run from 22-31 October 2021.
Participants will have an option to select whether they want to receive fanart, fanfiction, fanvids, and/or podfics. Signups must include 3-10 fandoms, and each fandom must have 1-20 relationships from the list of nominated relationships.
Participants may offer to create fanfart, fanfiction, fanvids, and/or podfic. You may offer between 3-10 fandoms, with 1-20 relationships per fandom.
Complete rules and FAQs can be found on the Holly Poly AO3 collection.
Holly Poly can also be found on Dreamwidth, Twitter, and Tumblr.
Fanlore Seeks Input on Image Policy about Images of Fans
Fanlore is the fandom history wiki and is a project of the Organization for Transformative Works. Through 31 October 2021, they are seeking public input on their proposed policy on how the wiki will handle uploaded images that include pictures of fans. To read the proposed policy and comment, see the post on Fanlore's Dreamwidth.