Around the World and Web

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 FAQcode 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 

  • 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!

  • 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.

  • 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.

    What time is that for me?

    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!

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

Darkest Night Exchange: Sign-Ups Open

The Darkest Night is an exchange fest celebrating dark themes in fanworks. You sign up with a list of characters/ships to create a fanwork (either fanart or fanfic) for another person, and someone else will do the same for you. This exchange is run on Archive of Our Own. It's time for Darkest Night 2021 to rise again! Note that the dates have shifted from past years. The Darkest Night schedule:

  • Nominations open: August 6 
  • Nominations close: August 13 (8:00PM EDT)
  • Sign-ups open: August 14 
  • Sign-ups close: August 22 (8:00 PM EDT)
  • Works due: September 26 (8:00PM EDT)
  • Works revealed: October 3 (8:00PM EDT)
  • Creators revealed: October 10 (8:00 PM EDT)

Sign-ups open on August 14 and close on August 22 at 8:00 PM EDT. You can request 4-10 fandoms, with 1-20 characters or groups per fandom, as well as 2-40 free-form tags per fandom. You can also choose your medium per request: fanfiction, fanart, or both. Offers work the same way: 4-10 fandoms, 1-20 characters or groups per fandom, and 2-40 free-form tags per fandom. You can choose to offer either fanfiction, fanart, or both. We use OR matching, meaning that you will be matched with someone who requested at least one of the characters/ships, freeforms, and mediums, you offered, but probably won’t match on all. See the Darkest Night community for more on sign-ups.

Darkest Night Exchange: Nominations Open

The Darkest Night is an exchange fest celebrating dark themes in fanworks. You sign up with a list of characters/ships to create a fanwork (either fanart or fanfic) for another person, and someone else will do the same for you. This exchange is run on Archive of Our Own. It's time for Darkest Night 2021 to rise again! Note that the dates have shifted from past years. The Darkest Night schedule:

  • Nominations open: August 6 
  • Nominations close: August 13 (8:00PM EDT)
  • Sign-ups open: August 14 
  • Sign-ups close: August 22 (8:00 PM EDT)
  • Works due: September 26 (8:00PM EDT)
  • Works revealed: October 3 (8:00PM EDT)
  • Creators revealed: October 10 (8:00 PM EDT)

Nominations open on August 6 and close at 8:00 PM EDT on August 13. You may nominate 6 fandoms, with 5 characters/groups in each, and 10 additional tags. There is no rarity requirement regarding which fandoms can be nominated from. RPF, Crossover Fandoms, and Original Works are all allowed. Non-traditional fandoms such as songs, poetry, anthropomorphism, etc. are also allowed. See the Darkest Night community for more on nominations.

Chromatic Characters Podfic Anthology II Accepting Submissions

The Chromatic Characters Podfic Anthology is collecting short podfics that center characters of color in different fandoms to release as an anthology and as a collection of individual files. This should be a low-stress project, even for people who are new to podficcing, due to the word-count: 1500 words or less (with many being as short as 1-2 minutes.)

This year's submission deadline is September 12th, and we will post on September 30th.

Our theme for this year's anthology is community. It's optional—all podfics are welcome as long as they follow the rules laid out in the Submission Guidelines—but feel free to let it inspire you if you'd like.

If you’d like to get a sense of this project, you can see the previous CCPA anthology here.

Complete guidelines and submission instructions are available on the Chromatic Characters Podfic Anthology page.

 

Oxonmoot 2021: Programme Posted and Registration Open

Oxonmoot is an annual event hosted by The Tolkien Society which brings together Tolkien fans, scholars, students and Society members from across the world. Oxonmoot 2021 is being held over four days, from the afternoon of Thursday 2nd September until lunch time on Sunday 5th September. For the first time, this will be a hybrid event bringing together online delegates with those attending in person at St Anne’s College, Oxford.

Register to attend Oxonmoot online
Register to attend Oxonmoot in-person
Talks and papers programme

The deadline to submit a proposal for an activity has been extended to 1 August 2021. Find more about how to submit an activity here.

Tolkien OC Week: fandom event for original characters and underdeveloped characters

Tolkien OC Week is a fandom event focusing on original characters and underdeveloped characters in Tolkien's world which will be held on Tumblr during the week from  26th July - 1st August 2021 for the first time. 

The event schedule for 2021:

Day 1 (26th July): Shipping - create a piece of fanwork about an OC that you ship with a canon character.

Day 2 (27th July): Family members - create a piece of fanwork about a character who fills a gap left in a family tree (e.g., Legolas’ mother, Maglor’s spouse, Aragorn and Arwen’s younger children).

Day 3 (28th July): Background characters - create a piece of fanwork about a character who is in the background of canon scenes and is either never mentioned or barely mentioned in the story (e.g., an extra from Laketown, a Teler defending their ships during the First Kinslaying, the Haradric man that Sam sees die) and show their view of the events.

Day 4 (29th July): Self insert/reader insert - create a piece of fanwork that includes yourself being in Middle Earth, or write a reader insert story.

Day 5 (30th July): Worldbuilding - create a piece of fanwork about a character who lives in a different place or time from the main canonical events (e.g., a character from Rhûn, a character who stays in Valinor after the Darkening, a character living in Gondor when the kings were still ruling etc.) and flesh out their world.

Day 6 (31th July): Forgotten characters - take a character who is neglected (e.g. Bob and Nob in Bree, Eärwen) or abandoned by Tolkien (e.g. Trotter the hobbit) and make them your own by creating a piece of fanwork about them. Or, completely redesign a canon character to make them yours (e.g., Gil-Galad becoming Fin-Galad).

Day 7 (1st August): Freeform - create a piece of fanwork about whatever resonates with you.

 

More details in the linked post.

Call for Papers: Tolkien Sessions at Leeds International Medieval Conference 2022

Paper abstracts are currently being sought for the following Tolkien sessions for the Leeds International Medieval Congress, to be held at the University of Leeds on 4-7 July 2022. These sessions are organised by Dr Andrew Higgins and sponsored by the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic, University of Glasgow.  The special thematic strand of the conference will be “Borders” which is reflected in several of the suggested sessions.

Paper submissions are being sought for the following sessions (for descriptions, see the full call for papers):

  • Tolkien: Medieval Roots and Modern Branches
  • Tolkien and Medieval Poets: A Session in Memory of Richard C. West  
  • Crossing Borders in Middle-earth 
  • Borders between Life and Death in Tolkien’s Legendarium
  • Family Ties:  The Limits of Kinship in Tolkien’s Middle-earth
  • Orientation, Transgression, and Crossing Borders of Middle-earth
  • Tolkien as a Gateway to Interdisciplinary Teaching: A Roundtable

Paper titles and abstracts are due by August 31, 2021 and should be 150 words maximum. Conference presentations will be 15-20 minutes long.

"The Nature of Middle-earth" Available 2 September 2021

On 2 September, a new compilation of Tolkien's unpublished writings will become available: The Nature of Middle-earth, edited by Carl F. Hostetter, a Tolkien linguist whose has worked previously on Vinyar Tengwar and Parma Eldalamberon. In an interview with Hostetter, Tolkienista's Cristina Casagrande describes Hostetter as playing "the role of a descendant of the forgotten Ælfwine, bringing back the seeds of the Tree."

"Though I wasn’t aware of it at the time," says Hostetter in the interview, "I started work on what would become The Nature of Middle-earth nearly 25 years ago, when I received a bundle of photocopies that Christopher Tolkien referred to as 'late philological essays'." According to the interview, NoMe will include Tolkien's writings, previously published in Vinyar Tengwar, “Ósanwe-kenta,” “Notes on Órë,” and “The Rivers and Beacon-hills of Gondor,” as well as late writings on Elven reincarnation.

Athrabeth Podcast: Episode 36: Tolkien and Diversity Recap

Episode 36 of the Athrabeth podcast discusses the Tolkien Society Seminar, Tolkien and Diversity. Hosts Jude and Stef attended the Tolkien Society Seminar last weekend and are very proud to present their recap of the events. It was a tremendously enriching seminar and they're pleased to have the opportunity to highlight all of the seminar's contributors. Listen to Episode 36: Tolkien and Diversity Recap here.

 

Fall for Tolkien Artist Sign-Ups Open July 15

How the Fall for Tolkien event works: Artists submit their art.  All art submitted should be "finished" before it is submitted.  Art is added to a super awesome presentation.

At the end of the submission period, artists who also want to write get first dibs at making claims.

Authors choose art to write for.

Each author can make up to three claims to start; as they finish pieces, they can return and make additional claims.  Artwork can be claimed multiple times.

Complete Fall for Tolkien guidelines are available on their website.

Fall for Tolkien Schedule

July 15: Artist Sign-ups Open
September 1: Author Sign-ups Open
September 15: Artist Sign-ups Close
September 20: Art Submissions Due
October 3: Author Sign-ups Close
October 10: Author Claims (for Artists) Open
October 17: Author Claims (for Authors Only) Open
December 18: Author Submissions Due
December 21: AO3 Collection Opens

Welcome Back, Tolkien Fan Fiction!

The Tolkien Fan Fiction archive has been rebuilt and is back online! First opened in 2005, TFF is open to members of the Henneth-Annun Groups.io discussion list and accepts nearly all fanfiction based on Tolkien's works. The complete TFF rules are here.