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Lord of the Rings Secret Santa 2025

So, it's that time of the year again: time to sign up for the Lord of the Rings Secret Santa exchange! Slash, femslash, het and gen; you can request it all, so why not join in?

Lord of the Rings Secret Santa has been going for twenty-two years, and we'd love to see you join us and keep the tradition going.

Lord of the Rings Secret Santa has been a traditional exchange since its inception, but we continue to adapt and refine the exchange to best serve all participants. The exchange has been in the form of a prompt meme since 2020. If you are new to the format, AO3 has a helpful FAQ here.

This year's timeline (2025):

• Prompt Posting: November 5th to 27th.
• Claiming: November 28th to December 28th.
• Collection Open for Posting: November 28th to December 28th.
• All Fills Due: December 28th.

You will be able to post up to 2 prompts, and we will do our 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.) We're always open to all the Peoples and Ages of Middle-earth, which means that characters from The Hobbit and The Rings of Power are welcome too!

The Rules (2025):

• You will be able to post up to 2 prompts between November 5th and 27th, and we will do our best to make sure at least one of your prompts is filled.
• Your fill is due December 28th 11:59 pm Pacific Time (you can check what that is in your time zone here). Please post it to AO3 (and nowhere else, until January 10th).
• As a matter of fairness, please make your story more than 750 words (1000 is better).
• Once claiming has opened, please only claim a prompt if you plan on actually fulfilling your end of the bargain, and please only claim one prompt at a time. After you have completed your fill, you may claim a new one.
• Signing up: the sign up form can be found here (or here if the main link gives you an error message). If you need help with signing up, please don't hesitate to contact the mods via a comment on the DW signup post, or in an Ask or comment here. (If you are commenting as an anon, please sign your comment with an identifiable name for ease of continued contact.)
• It's a good idea to join the LotR_SeSa LiveJournal community or the Dreamwidth community so you can keep track of any admin posts. (Admin posts will generally go up on the DW community first.) You can also follow us on Tumblr at LotR-SeSa.

Have fun -- and spread the word!

November Challenge at tolkienshortfanworks

Here is the tolkienshortfanworks challenge for November.

Thematic prompt:

Your piece should mention both a sibling relationship and a food item.

I'm having my eye on two upcoming Tumblr weeks here; if you like you can have a look at their prompt lists for inspiration, which are very nicely done, even if perhaps you might not be interested in Tumblr events as such:
https://www.tumblr.com/tolkien-food-week/796398861745815552/tolkien-food-week-list-of-prompts
https://www.tumblr.com/tolkiensiblingsweek/798504799422365696/less-than-one-month-to-go-until-the-very-first


Formal challenge:

Keeping it simple this month with traditional drabbles: 100 words or multiples of 100.


As usual, these two prompt sets can be filled separately or combined.

Usual reminder that in order to post the fill to this community or to the related collection on AO3 (linked in a sticky post at the top), the fanwork can only have a word count up to 1000 words and must be linked to a Tolkien fandom.
Rec lists and podfics can be posted as fills for thematic prompts, as long as the fanworks concerned meet those conditions.

Also we continue to welcome other pieces unrelated to any challenge, of course, including cross-posts and older stories, as long as they meet the criteria!

Glorthelion Week 2025

Aspec Arda Week

Aspec Arda Week will be returning November 9th-15th 2025!

This event celebrates asexual and aromantic spectrum interpretations and headcanons of Tolkien's Legendarium. 

Any content about the a-spectrum is welcome! You can create edits, gifs, fanart, fanfic, fanmixes, and more! All versions of canon/fanon and characters are welcome, be it from the books, movies, TV, OCs, etc. Please tag your posts with #aspecardaweek AND @ mention this blog @aspecardaweek so they can be easily found. If you are posting your submission to AO3, you can add it to the event collection here. This is not an event for generative AI works.

For information regarding submissions, tagging, and rules, please see the event blog's Code of Conduct.

Prompts

DAY ONE: Asexuality

What characters do you see as asexual? Why? How does that impact their lives?

Alternative prompt: Discovery

DAY TWO: Aromanticism

What characters do you see as aromantic? Why? How does that impact their lives?

Alternative prompt: Found Family

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: 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 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: Coming Out

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 linguistics for it.

"In this matter the Elven-tongues make distinctions. To speak of Quenya: Love, which Men might call 'friendship; (but for the greater strength and warmth and permanency with which it was felt by the Quendi) was represented by mel. This was primarily a motion or inclination of the fea, and therefore could occur between persons of the same sex or different sexes. It included no sexual or procreative desire, though naturally in Incarnates the difference of sex altered the emotion, since ;sex' is held by the Eldar to belong also to the fea and not solely to the hroa, and is therefore not wholly included in procreation. such persons were often called melotorni 'love-brothers' and meletheldi 'love-sisters.'

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: What is a particular character’s relationship with their aspec identity? Are they out and proud? Is it a big part of their life?

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?
• 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.

Call For Papers: Reading Fanfiction/Fanfiction Readings

Call for Papers: Reading Fanfiction/Fanfiction Readings

Fanfiction can be many things: an interpretation of the source text, an insight into a fandom
culture, or an exemplar of popular narrative tropes and themes. But fannish stories are also,
always, works of fiction, and they reward in-depth analysis as much as any other work of
literature.

In Reading Fanfiction/Fanfiction Readings, we aim to put together a collection of essays in which
we treat fan fiction as an important form of contemporary literature, using the tools of close
reading: focus on the author’s use of language, imagery, and theme. This project calls to all of us
who have discussed a story for hours (or over many comments or DMs), or who have a story
that we rec to friends who don’t know the fandom or the characters, because it just has that
much to offer, or who have a story we come back to long after we’ve moved on to another
fandom, a story that we have analyzed in passing but feel it deserved an article of its own. If you
love close textual readings and love fan fiction and have a story that says and means so much
more, we want your contribution!

We are looking for 3,000-4,000 word essays that provide a close reading of a specific story and
whose argument addresses the relevance and impact of the story as literature beyond its status
as fannish commentary. Every essay in this volume will focus on a specific story (or series), asking
how a fan author uses a fandom’s narratives and tropes to think beyond the themes or interests
of the fannish source; or, to put it another way, to ask what is the fanfiction author using the
fandom to think about?

Please contact us with your ideas on a specific story, fandom, and, if applicable, pairing. We’d
appreciate a brief abstract or an email detailing your basic argument and theoretical framework.
We want to feature stories from a wide range of fandoms and genres. We don’t discourage the
discussion of shorter works, but longer stories often allow fan writers to move beyond the direct
focus on the source text and engage in broader philosophical, social, and personal engagements.
Essays on lesser-known fanfiction stories are welcome, but a story’s respective popularity,
enduring appeal, and appeal outside of its fandom can indicate how the story speaks to fans
beyond its initially intended interpretive community. We already have some contributors, and
we want to put together a collection of essays that offers a wide range of close readings over a
diverse set of fanfiction.
The volume is contracted to The University of Michigan Press.

Timeline and Contact Info 

April 1, 2026 Completed Essay
July 1, 2026 Final Revision

Francesca Coppa (coppa@muhlenberg.edu) & Kristina Busse (kbusse2@gmail.com)

Tolkien Food Week 2025

Tolkien Food Week is a Tumblr event where we share recipes we love and link them to Tolkien's works in one way or another. Recipes, fanfics, fanart or other.

Tolkien Food Week will run 3 to 9th November 2025.

To participate, post a recipe and tell us which character would like it best and why, or what place of Middle-Earth it would come from, tag me @tolkien-food-week and tag it with #tolkien food week.

Or post a fanfic about food, or fanart, or whatever you like.

Rules are simple: no hate, no ship wars, no AI.

Prompts 

These are purely optional ofc!

Day 1 - soups and stews / Hobbits (3rd nov)

Day 2 - breads and cakes / Nùmenor (4th nov)

Day 3 - teas and drinks / Gondor and Rohan (5th nov)

Day 4 - vegetarian dishes / Elven realms (6th nov)

Day 5 - salads / Ents and Maiar (7th nov)

Day 6 - sweets / Dwarven realms (8th nov)

Day 7 - fish dishes / crack (9th nov)

Silmarillion Secret Stockings

Welcome to Silmarillion Secret Stockings!

This is a Secret Santa-like prompt fest for the Silmarillion fandom at large, where people can write gifts for each other, based on stockings/prompts left on AO3. Who has never wished for a few cheeky elves in their stockings, or a dragon by the fireplace?

The aim here is to have a low-threshold, low-pressure event; as such, this does not operate as a classic gift exchange. There are no minimum requirements, you can prompt without planning to fill a stocking (although it's encouraged! The idea is for each stocking to hopefully receive several fills!), and you can write fills without having prompted.

Find more detailed information on how this works in the FAQ.

Our Schedule:

• Prompting/Sign-ups: November 1st - 15th
• Creation Period: November 16th - December 29th
• Work Reveals: January 1st
• Creator Reveals: January 8th

As you can see, gifters are meant to be anonymous until the reveals on January 8th, to keep the spirit of surprise/gifts. As such, we ask you to keep it secret, keep it safe!

Nolofinwëan Week 2025

Nolofinwëan Week welcomes fan creations centering any members of the House of Fingolfin and their descendants through the ages. Nolofinwëan Week 2025 will run from November 2nd - 8th.

To Participate

• Create fanfiction, fanart, headcanons, close readings and musings, moodboards, photography, rec lists or anything else that inspires you to celebrate Nolofinwëan characters.
• Mention the blog @nolofinweanweek in your post and include the hashtag #nolofinweanweek2025 in the first 10 tags.
• If you would like, add your work to the AO3 collection.
• Take inspiration from the nonmandatory daily prompts.
• Complete one or more of the community challenges.

Rules & Requirements

• There are no minimum or maximum requirements; anything goes!
• There are no content restrictions or rules on tagging beyond what AO3 requires of you. If you post to tumblr and your fill is Mature or Explicit, and/or falls under one of AO3’s major warnings, please provide tagging on your post, though!
• That said, please refrain from using genAI.
• This fest operates firmly under the premises of ‘don’t like; don’t read,’ ‘ship and let ship’ and ‘your kink is not my kink but that’s okay’ (if you’re unfamiliar with these concepts, see this post). We will not tolerate any shaming, harassment, or attempts to police content.

Prompts

Day 1: Heroism

• Characters: Fingon | Gil-galad | Argon
• Places: Ard-Galen | Thangorodrim | Mordor
• Inspirational Poem:

A song for the heroes who saw the sign And took their place in the battle-line. They were walls of granite and gates of brass, These heroes that cried, "They shall not pass." And they hurled them back in a storm of cheers, And the sound will echo on over the years. —E. F. Hayward

+++

Day 2: Sacrifice

• Characters: Anairë | Elenwë | Elwing
• Places: Valinor | Helcaraxë
• Inspirational Poem:

Love cannot be bought, Neither hath it price; It seeks not, and is given unsought, A glad self-sacrifice. —John Boyle O'Reilly

+++

Day 3: Adventure

• Characters: Aredhel | Tuor
• Places: Vinyamar | Nan Dungortheb
• Inspirational Poem:

I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. —Robert Frost

+++

Day 4: Wisdom

• Characters: Fingolfin | Turgon | Elrond
• Places: Mithrim | Barad Eithel | Lindon
• Inspirational Poem:

The tree must stand, it cannot run;Whatever comes of snow or sun It has to bear; it has no fears; Knowing not regret nor tears It stands and stretches to the sky Without a murmur, plaint or sigh— And this has stood a thousand years, And seen ten thousand storms go by! —Annette Wynne

+++

Day 5: Heritage

• Characters: Idril | Maeglin | Eärendil
• Places: Gondolin | Sirion
• Inspirational Poem:

My river runs to thee: Blue sea, wilt welcome me? My river waits reply. Oh sea, look graciously! I'll fetch thee brooks From spotted nooks, — Say, sea, Take me! —Emily Dickinson

+++

Day 6: Separation

Characters: Elros | Eöl | Celebrían

Places: Nan Elmoth | Númenor

Inspirational Poem:

Fare thee well! the ship is ready, And the breeze is fresh and steady. Hands are fast the anchor weighing; High in the air the streamer's playing. Spread the sails—the waves are swelling Proudly round thy buoyant dwelling, Fare thee well! and when at sea, Think of those, who sigh for thee. —Hannah Flagg Gould

+++

Day 7: Memory

• Characters: Peredil Descendants | Original Characters
• Places: Rivendell | Arnor | Gondor
• Inspirational Poem:

Only lovers see the fall a signal end to endings a gruffish gesture alerting those who will not be alarmed that we begin to stop in order to begin again. —Maya Angelou

Community Challenges

Community challenges are a way to share some love with the fandom community or participate in a low-commitment way.

Day 1: Step away from the beaten path: Pick a Nolofinwëan character that you usually skip over or simply haven't really thought about much. Read a story featuring that character. Look up some new art. Don't forget to leave a kudo, a comment, or hit the reblog button.

Day 2: Discover someone new: Find a creator who is participating in Nolofinwëan Week this year and who is new(ish) to you. Follow them and interact with their creations (read, share, comment). 

Day 3: Share your faves: Create a rec list of your favorite creations featuring Nolofinwëan characters. Don't forget to tag the creators if they are on Tumblr.

Day 4: Inspire something new: Send a creator an Ask (anon or not) with an optional prompt. Don't forget to be gentle and encouraging as you go about it.

Day 5: Heap some love: Send a creator an Ask (anon or not) and tell them how much you love their work, or maybe ask them to do a "director's cut" about something they created.

Day 6: Do a Throwback: Dig a little through that bookmarks list! Reblog or share a link to an older creation featuring Nolofinwëan characters and let the creator know why you like it in the tags.

Day 7: Give a gift: Give your faves a little gift! Create a moodboard, a playlist, or a drabble based on a creation you loved. Tag the person who is receiving the gift.

Tolkien Horror Week 2025

Day 1: Angband, Utumno, & Tol-in-Gaurhoth | beautiful and yet horrible of shape | captives and thralls

Day 2: Angmar & Minas Morgul | lit with a fell light | specters and wraiths

Day 3: Mordor & the Dead Marshes | enmeshed in shadows | spells and enchantments

Day 4: The Barrow-downs & the Old Forest | cold be hand and heart and bone | mists and mires

Day 5: Mirkwood, Nan Elmoth, & Taur-nu-Fuin | hunted like wild beasts | beasts and monsters

Day 6: Nan Dungortheb & the Paths of the Dead | phantoms of terror | webs and snares

Day 7: Isengard, Moria, & Númenor | old and forgotten | rituals and sacrifices

Tolkien Fanfiction Survey, 3rd Edition

Do you read or write fanfiction based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien or a Tolkien media adaptation like the film trilogies or Rings of Power series? If so, we'd love to hear from you!

The Tolkien Fanfiction Survey first ran in 2015 and has run every five years since. We are excited to introduce the third edition, which will give us insight into how the fandom has changed across the last decade!

What is it like to participate?

If you choose to participate, we will collect basic demographic information and ask you about your beliefs and habits regarding reading and/or writing Tolkien-based fanfiction. Most questions are multiple choice, but there is also a space on each page where you can elaborate on any of your answers if you want to share more information with us. You can skip any question you don't want to answer and quit the survey at any time.

The survey will take about 15-20 minutes to complete.

Who can participate?

• Participants must be 18 years or older.
• We want to hear from both readers and writers of Tolkien-based fanfiction.
• All levels of experience and involvement with Tolkien are welcome.
• Readers and writers of fic based on Jackson's film trilogies, The Rings of Power, and other Tolkien-derived media are welcome as well.
• If you read and/or wrote Tolkien-based fanfiction in the past but don't any longer, we still want to hear from you!

Who are you and what do you plan to do with the results?

We are Dawn "Felagund" Walls-Thumma and Maria K. Alberto, and we are both readers and writers of Tolkien fanfiction! Dawn is an independent scholar in Tolkien and fan studies, and Maria is an assistant professor at Richland Community College.

We hope this survey will help us to better understand how our fandom interacts with fanfiction, the texts and adaptations, and one another as fellow readers and writers. We will aggregate survey responses to look for trends and changes across the past decade of survey results. This data will be used in conference presentations, papers, and articles about Tolkien fandom and Tolkien-based fanfiction, but we will also share our data and findings in fandom spaces. We will also make data available to other researchers who want to do similar research.

If you have questions or concerns about this survey, you can contact either of us: Dawn Walls-Thumma at DawnFelagund@gmail.com or Maria K. Alberto at m.l.e.alberto@gmail.com.

Click here to start the Tolkien Fanfiction Survey!

Please signal boost the survey in other Tolkien fan spaces, where it is appropriate to do so.