Around the World and Web

Around the World and Web includes announcements and items of interest from beyond the SWG.

Teitho May/June Challenge: Joker

The time has come for a Joker Theme for May/June!

In a game of cards, you can use the Joker card to replace any other. Now you can pick ANY of our past challenges that stir your imagination and write a story or create art for it!

You can finally write that story you wanted to write for that challenge once but didn't have time for it, or never quite got polished to your satisfaction.

You could even write a story for some of the challenges that Teitho had before you knew about its existence! Or any of our recent ones!

We’d love to see your stories!

Please submit your stories before June 30, 2024, to teitho.contest@gmail.com.

Rules for the Teitho Contest can be found here.

Monstrous May 2024

Monstrous May was first established in 2021, and I've arranged prompts for each May since - for each day of the month of May, there is a prompt involving and invoking the monstrous.

Create art, sculpture, write fiction, poetry, make whatever you feel inspired to! Create for as many or as few days as inspire you, collaborate with friends, and have fun.

Fan creations are just as welcome as original ones, and naturally, erotic and adult creations are as well as SFW ones!

Prompts are available on Tumblr.

Have some questions? Here’s the FAQ from 2021 or ask on Tumblr.

Fellowship of the Fics: Modern AU May

You know what doesn't get enough love? Modern AUs! This event is a trope mash-up of sorts. You (or your followers) can combine an AU setting, character occupation, and dialogue prompt. You have all month to make as many different combinations as you want!

Prompts are available on Fellowship of the Fic's tumblr.

And, of course, don’t forget to send us your fics when you are done so we can put them in our queue using this form!! Happy writing!

May challenge at tolkienshortfanworks

The May challenge has been posted to the tolkienshortfanworks community on Dreamwidth. 
The thematic challenge for May is: name.
Tolkien has some interesting thoughts on naming.
Elves, depending on their background, can have mother names, father names and later given or adopted names, as well as adaptations of their names into other languages. Galadriel has all of these!
Dwarves, depending on the period, may have their own secret internal names and outward-facing names in Mannish languages.
Aragorn and Gandalf canonically both have multiple names, too.
The Quenya word for "name" is also the name of a Tengwa.
The Long List of the Ents has at its core a list of names.

The formal challenge is: acrostic.
This means that the first letters of your lines, sentences, paragraphs or sections should spell a word (or name!).
There is a selection of examples (prose and poetry) from the Tolkien fandom here on AO3.

Acrostics often spell out names or phrases containing names, but they can spell out any other word you like.
Also, as usual for these challenges, you can write about names or write an acrostic entirely independently of each other.
They can also be freely combined with prompts from other challenges, such as SWG's.

More details on the challenge at the linked entry.

New participants welcome!

 

May 2024 Calls for Papers

Oxonmoot 2024

Oxonmoot is an annual event hosted by The Tolkien Society which brings together over 500 Tolkien fans, scholars, students and Society members from across the world. Oxonmoot 2024 will be our 51st, and will be held over four days, from the afternoon of Thursday 29th August until the afternoon of Sunday 1st September, and will be held at St Anne’s College, Woodstock Road, Oxford and Online.

We are pleased to welcome contributions of all types to the programme for Oxonmoot 2024.

The Talks and Papers strand will run through the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday mornings. Papers may be presented in person in Oxford or online via Zoom.

The Call for Papers is now open! Presentations may be submitted here. Deadline to submit a talk or paper is midnight UK time on May 12th.

The Talks and Papers will be balanced by a wide range of other Activities – these could include, but are not limited to, workshops, demonstrations, discussions, games, physical activities, films & videos and social activities – but any and all offers are most welcome. Activities may take place in Oxford, online, or combine both online and in person participation, and may be scheduled alongside the Talks & Papers, or in the Evening (local time) time depending on the nature of the Activity. The Call for Activities will open later in the year.

Participants with questions may contact the Activities Programme Co-Ordinator, or for social activities the Social Programme Co-Ordinator.

See the Oxonmoot 2024 page for more information or to register!

Mythcon 53: Fantasies of the Middle Lands

The Mythopoeic Society’s annual conference, popularly called “Mythcon,” will be held in Minneapolis, Minnesota this year, from 2-5 August 2024. The idea of “middle-ness” can suggest stability—the center of an object is less likely to break than its edges. It can also suggest the opposite: something in a state of change can be said to be “in the middle”—neither one thing nor another. Mythcon 53, located in the middle of the continental U.S., welcomes papers exploring the concept of “middle-ness” as it is worked out in fantasy, science fiction, and related genres. Paper topics can cover a wide range of possibilities, including but not limited to the following:

  • Locations: This could mean the implications of a place name including the word “middle,” such as Middle-earth or Midgard; places in our world that either shape or appear in fantasy such as the English Midlands or Middle America as in Stranger Things or American Gods; or even liminal places that appear in fantasy such as train stations, purgatory, or The Wood Between the Worlds.
  • Characters: the middle child in a family (Arya Stark, Edmund Pevensie); adolescents negotiating that in-between space (Luce in The Owl House; Ged in Earthsea); individuals or people groups who are a mix of others (Tolkien’s Númenóreans; Percy Jackson).
  • Textual middle-ness: intertextuality, genre-crossing, multiple media, even the middle books/movies of a trilogy (The Empire Strikes BackThe Two Towers).
  • Authors: considering the location of the con, Midwestern authors and scholars such as Tim O’Brian, Jack Zipes, Lois McMaster Bujold, or Philip Jose Farmer.

We also welcome papers on the work of either of our Guests of Honor, Brian Attebery and Eleanor Arnason. Because this conference is happening in conjunction with Diversicon, a multicultural, multimedia event dedicated to improving contacts among groups and individuals interested in speculative fiction, we are also interested in papers on their traditional Posthumous Guest, who this year is L. Frank Baum. And, as always, we welcome papers focusing on the work and interests of the Inklings (especially J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams), and other fantasy authors and themes. Papers from a variety of critical perspectives and disciplines are welcome.

Each paper will be given a one-hour slot to allow time for questions, but individual papers should be timed for oral presentation in 40 minutes maximum. Panels are also welcome, and both papers and panels may be presented virtually or in person. Paper abstracts of no more than 300 words, along with contact information, should be sent to the Papers Coordinator at papers@mythcon.org by May 15, 2024. Please include your A/V requirements and the projected time needed for your presentation. If your programming interests are more in line with Diversicon’s focus (see http://www.diversicon.org/), then please send your proposal to scottl2605@aol.com.

Additional Links:
Mythcon 53 Conference Page
Mythcon 53 Registration

German Tolkien Society Seminar: Tolkien and His Editors

Tolkien, in paratextual parts of his main work The Lord of the Rings, introduced himself as the editor and translator of the Red Book of Westmarch. A similar conjecture can be found in Farmer Giles of Ham, which comes with a scholarly preface and purports to be the translation of a medieval manuscript. These rather playful examples should be set alongside the real-world editors of Tolkien’s works. In his will, Tolkien made his youngest son Christopher (1924-2020) his ‘literary executor’ with “full power to publish edit alter rewrite or complete any work of mine which may be unpublished at my death or to destroy the whole or any part or parts of any such unpublished works as he in his absolute discretion may think fit and subject thereto” (official copy of Tolkien’s will, 23 July, 1973). Until his death (16 January 2020), Christopher actively fulfilled his role as ‘literary executor’ and edited and made available to a wide audience countless texts from Tolkien’s estate – and thus strongly influenced the perception and understanding of the works already published during Tolkien’s lifetime. Above all, The Silmarillion (1977), which he edited and, as was established in retrospect (Kane 2009), was heavily modified by him, had a major influence on Tolkien research.

In addition to the central figure of Christopher Tolkien, who could have celebrated his 100th birthday in 2024, the roles of the editors Stanley and Rayner Unwin, the biographer Humphrey Carpenter (BiographyLetters), the student and later colleague Alan Bliss (Hengest and Finn), the daughter-in-law Baillie Tolkien (The Father Christmas Letters) or the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship should also be examined.

The aim of this seminar is to bring together researchers from different disciplines to explore the various questions and problems posed by the publication of Tolkien’s work.

Possible starting points for presentations would be:

  • Christopher Tolkien (1924-2020) as ‘co-author’ of Tolkien’s work
  • Censorship and restriction: the search for the ‘true’ Tolkien biography
  • Tolkien’s posthumous academic work
  • The publication of the works on the Elvish (and other) languages
  • Access to and handling of Tolkien’s manuscripts and notes in the Bodleian and the Marquette

The 20th Seminar of the German Tolkien Society is supported by Walking Tree Publishers and will take place in a hybrid format at the RWTH Aachen from 11-13 October 2024. 

Interested applicants are requested to send a short synopsis (no longer than one page) and a short biography as well as their preference (attendance in person or online presentation) to Thomas Fornet-Ponse by 31 May 2024: hither-shore@tolkiengesellschaft.de

See the full call for papers here.

Signum University Regional Moots

These small, regional conferences are held at various dates and locations. See the Regional Moots page for more details.


Many thanks to Robin Anne Reid and her Online Conference Project for handily compiling this information on a regular basis!

Angbang Week 2024

 

Welcome one and all to the third annual Angbang appreciation event! Angbang Week will run 6-12 May 2024 on Tumblr.

We will be accepting any and all original creations for the upcoming event - visual, written or auditory, which is including but not limited to fanfiction, poetry, art both traditional and digital, playlists or other musical creations, moodboards, and anything else you may come up with. So long as they're new, or as of yet unpublished, created by you and feature Angbang, we want to see them and feature them!

Prompts

  • Day 1 - May 6th: Scars | Injuries*
  • Day 2 - May 7th: Haste | Malice
  • Day 3 - May 8th: Spying | Shapeshifting
  • Day 4 - May 9th: Mountains | Iron
  • Day 5 - May 10th: Fire | Lava
  • Day 6 - May 11th: Order | Chaos
  • Day 7 - May 12th: Prompt of choice from the previous weeks**

*We are aware of the nature of the first prompt. Due to this, we do ask that in addition to all relevant tags, you add the correct tag of either "scars" or "injuries" to your work on day 1 should you choose to post it, especially the latter, so that people could filter it out. We will likewise add relevant tags to works featuring these prompts so that anyone may filter it out if they so wish.

**As you've noticed, this year's final "free" prompt is a bit more restrictive, and would encourage using one of the prompts from previous years, found here and here. One of them is free space, but we do encourage using one of the non-day-7 ones if you can.

Like in the previous years, we encourage you to pick whichever prompt you like better of the two offered that day (you can also wait for another day if you don't like either prompt, or combine the two if you prefer, or even make content for both prompts if you're really looking for a challenge / prefer not sleeping during the month of May, whatever you like). Once you've picked a prompt and made content for it, use the current year's Angbang Week tag, which is either #AngbangWeek2024 or #Angbang Week 2024, or tag this blog directly when posting your prompt for us to reblog it. Try not to post it before the event starts (you can queue up specific posts for specific days to help with that), do not worry about being late, and most importantly, enjoy! No need to stress yourself out over silly ship stuff.

For any additional questions, requests, or additional clarification regarding anything event-related, feel free to send an ask or a DM at anytime!

Tolkien Ekphrasis Week 2024

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

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

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

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

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

If you miss the day, or are desperate to create work about some form of art not included in the prompts, don't worry! Posting amnesty/prompt free-for-all day will be June 17, and posting here and in the AO3 Collection will be open for a year from June 10, 2024.

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

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

Inclusion

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

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

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

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

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

Calendar

June 9, 2024: Submit all works to the AO3 Collection by this date

June 10-16, 2024: Reveals

Housekeeping

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

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

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

If you have any questions, you can get in touch with the mod, chestnut_pod, via Tumblr ask or comments on the Tolkien Ekphrasis Week Dreamwidth post.

Links

Tumblr Blog | Dreamwidth Community | AO3 Collection | FAQ

Teitho April/May Challenge: Quotes

Teitho is a monthly fanfiction contest. Our April/May prompt uses the source material directly for inspiration. Choose any of the following quotes as inspiration for your story.

1. From The Silmarillion: “the deeds that we shall do shall be the matter of song until the last days of Arda.”

2. From The Hobbit: “There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.”

3. From The Lord of the Rings: “All’s well as ends Better!”

What thoughts and feelings do these quotes inspire? They may come from different books and from different characters, but they can encompass many moments from Tolkien’s legendarium.

The tales of Beleriand may have inspired song but so did the events of the Last Alliance, the search for the Entwives, the destruction on the One ring, the ride of the Rohirrim.

Many characters find something on their adventures—it could be an object but sometimes it’s a secret, unexpected information, or even something they learn about themselves.

Perhaps you would like to write about the moments those words reference? What did Mandos think of Fëanor’s words? Fingolfin? The Noldor gathered in that place?

There is no requirement to use the quote directly in your story but you are free to do so, if you like.

We are excited to read your submissions! Please email your stories to teitho.contest@gmail.com by May 31!

Find more about Teitho here.

Forgotten Ground Regained: Call for Submissions

The Fall issue of Forgotten Ground Regained is open for submissions. I am especially interested in poetry that explores themes of love, devotion, and desire – themes that are, thus far, relatively sparsely represented in modern English alliterative verse. Submissions should be sent to Paul D. Deane at the following email address: pdeane [at] alliteration.net.

Requirements

  • Submissions must be in modern English, but authors should feel free to submit poems that take advantage of the diction, rhythms, and syntax of particular language varieties and communities. I do not discriminate against Scots, Appalachian English, Black English Vernacular, Indian English, or any other language variety, though I do ask that authors be prepared to supply notes to explain any terms or expressions that outsiders to their communities may not readily understand.
  • Submissions should make skillful, systematic use of alliteration in ways that use alliteration to reinforce the rhythm and connect important ideas. Overall, I prefer poems that have the strongest impact on readers when they are read aloud. I therefore encourage authors to include links to audio or video versions of their poems in their submissions.
  • I would love to see people experimenting with modern English versions of Old and Middle English alliterative verse, with Old Norse forms like ljoòahattr and drottkvætt or modern Icelandic rimur, or with new alliterative forms designed to highlight modern English rhythms and speech patterns. While my first preference is what traditional scholarship calls alliterative-accentual verse, I am also open to alliterative free verse or to alliterative versions of traditional forms, such as the ballad, as long as the alliteration is clearly a structural rather than a decorative feature of the form. 
  • I am open to work both by contemporary poets and to projects that would normally be considered to fall outside the literary mainstream, such as speculative poetry, SCA Bardic Arts projects, and fan fiction.
  • There is no hard upper length limit, though poems more than five to six pages in length are likely to be published separately on the website, with links provided from the Fall issue, rather than being included directly in the pdf magazine. Note that I love both both the lyrical and the narrative turns in poetry, so longer narratives will be given careful consideration.
  • Please submit your poem in the body of your email. I will not open attachments.

Submissions for the Fall Issue must be received by September 15th, 2024.

WIP Big Bang 2024

The WIP Big Bang has one goal in mind: to clean out your fanfic drafts folder. These are stories that were unfinished for whatever reason, that authors returned to and completed, and the art that goes with them!

Schedule

All times are by 11:59pm PST. Convert time zones.

Sign-ups Begin- April 15th
Sign-ups Close- May 21st
Check In #1- May 22nd
Check In #2- June 15th
Snippets Due- July 1st
Art Claims Begin- July 17th
Check In #3- July 22nd
Check In #4- August 6th
Rough Drafts Due- August 15th
Posting Claims Begin- August 23rd
Posting Claims Ends- September 1st
Final Drafts/Art Due- September 7th
Posting Starts- September 8th

FAQ | 2024 WIP Big Bang Sign Up

Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang (TRSB) 2024

First conceived in 2018, the Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang (or TRSB!) is a Tolkien-fandom-wide event celebrating the talent of our fanwork creators. At its core, the event is about bringing together the artistic side of our fandom with the literary talents it possesses, creating bridges between the separate areas of fandom experience for the enjoyment of all. During the late spring, signed up artists submit fan art pieces in progress or finished, which is then posted anonymously in our Gallery. The Gallery is open to the pool of writers who have signed up for the event only. Each writer is then invited to claim a piece of art to write for; the minimum word count is 5000.

We are open to all characters, genres, ships and ratings, and all canons that fall under the Tolkien fandom umbrella. This includes movieverse (i.e. the LOTR and Hobbit trilogies), lesser known works by Tolkien (such as The Father Christmas Letters), and/or other works with a clear link to his life or creative output (for example, Tolkien’s translations and academic texts, the 2019 Tolkien biopic, fan-made films like Born of Hope, and game canons such as Lord of the Rings Online). Crossovers between two or more Tolkien canons are permitted.

When we started this event, one thing we absolutely agreed on was our desire for maximum inclusivity. In practice this means that:

  • We encourage participation from all sections of the Tolkien fandom, whether you prefer bookverse, movieverse, game canon, smaller canons, or Tolkien’s academic papers.
  • Fan creators should ALL feel safe and able to join in, regardless of experience levels or perceived ability. This means that everybody is welcome, whether they’re a professional artist/writer or a complete beginner, whether they’ve been a fan for decades or fell in love with the films last weekend.
  • As far as practically possible, all styles of art and all types of fic are permitted. We do not set restrictions on genre, style, rating or ship, although we do keep NSFW art submissions behind a lock, for the safety of our younger participants.

Above all, the event is supposed to be fun. Fandom should not be a place of difficulty, conflict and stress. With this in mind, we ask participants to be kind, inclusive, respectful and welcoming at all times.

Schedule

March 17 – 2023 Gallery Opens

The Gallery for 2023 is live at last! Enjoy all the beautiful pieces created for last year’s TRSB!

March 24 – 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 blog 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 14 – 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 ‘Signing Up’ section of the FAQ for more details on what these terms mean.

May 5 – Artist Sign-up Deadline

May 10 – Discord Server Opens

May 13 – 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.

May 17 – Art Preview Opens

Our online gallery will be visible to signed up participants only.  Signed up authors can browse the artworks and see which pieces appeal to their muses!

May 18-19 Discord Art Talks

Repeating the fun from last year, these will be 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.

May 20 – Author Signups Deadline

May 25 – CLAIMS – 17:00 UTC

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 in the first instance; 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 a number of artworks are left unclaimed, we may allow authors to claim second and third pieces of art to write for. However, we don’t know until after claims night whether this will be needed, so this is likely to be announced at short notice – keep an eye on the blog and on your emails to avoid missing out.

June 7 – 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 16 – 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 provide finished art to their authors much earlier than artists who are prepared to be more involved. See ‘Completing the Artwork’ in the FAQs for more details on how this works.

June 28 – 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.

June 26 – Check-in #3

The mods will email each pair to ensure everything is on track. One person from your pair must respond – see ‘Check Ins’ in the FAQs.

August 9 – Final Art Due

Artists should share a copy of the final art to their authors – but don’t post it yet!

Don’t email it to the mods.

August 16 – Final Check-in (#4)

Deadline to abandon your fic to a pinch hitter. There will be no penalty for dropping out on or before this date.
As per other check ins, except the mods will be providing instructions about promotional posts (see ‘Promotional Posts’ FAQ for more information). We will also ask you:

  • Whether you have discussed posting logistics with your artist (if you’re embedding art in your AO3 story, for example)
  • Whether you have specific posting needs re publicizing date/time frame (e.g. not wanting us to reblog your art/fic on Shabbat as you will be unable to respond)

August 26 – Art Can Be Posted

August 30 – Final Fic Due In Collection

Authors should post their stories in our AO3 collection with the artwork embedded or linked. (If you are writing a last minute pinch hit we can be a bit flexible with this deadline.)

TBA – Discord Art Reveals Event

September 6 – COLLECTION REVEALS

September 13 – Staggered Tumblr Reblogs Begin

September 20 – Gallery Submission

October 6 – Discord Server Closes

Other Links

Acorns and Oak Leaves: A Year of Bagginshield

Throughout 2024, the Bagginshield community Acorns and Oak Leaves offers monthly prompts to encourage new creations of all kinds (i.e. art, fics, gifs, etc) - but don't worry, there are no deadlines. Pick and choose whatever prompts you like, and be sure to tag the @acorns-and-oakleaves blog on Tumblr so we can share your Bagginshield creations!

Monthly prompts for the Year of Bagginshield can be found here.

Acorns and Oak Leaves also has a Discord server!


Around the World and Web Archive

Events listed here are no longer active but are listed on the site for historical purposes.

MiniWriMo 2023

Maybe you just want to get some words on paper. Maybe you’re gearing up for a big bang or similar challenge. Maybe you want to get in the habit of writing every day. Maybe you just want to bring something fabulous, wonderful, and positive into a year that has otherwise been grim and unprecedented and a lot of other trite and tiresome words that mean things have generally sucked. (Your mod apologizes for the editorializing. I’m just thrilled to have you all back.) Whatever your reason, if you want to take the month of November to write, but do not want to commit to an onerous word count, this is the comm for you.

Without further ado, it’s time for MiniWriMo!

Mini WriMo is a community for people not really up for the NaNoWriMo challenge but who still want to set and meet writing goals.

It's all very simple.

  1. Join the community. (Sign-ups are members-only, so you need to join first!)
  2. Commit to a word count. Minimum commitment is 100 words a day. There is no maximum, but we ask that you keep it realistic.
  3. Report in. Beginning November 1st, 2023, the mods will make a new post every day. Comment to that post with your written word count for the day. If you like, you can also post your work (in comments) or a link to your work, but it isn't required.

That's it. Word count can be to a single story, individual drabbles, snippets, vignettes, or ongoing works, it can be from any fandom or original. It can be slash, het, gen or a combination. Just write something.

Sign-ups will remain open through November 10.

November Challenge at tolkienshortfanworks on Dreamwidth

The tolkienshortfanworks challenge for November has been posted to the Dreamwidth community.

The thematic prompt is : leaf and/or tree.
There are, of course, many of both of these in the Legendarium, as well as Tolkien's shorter stories!
If you are in the northern hemisphere, the leaves have been turning colour and drifting in the wind; if you are in the southern hemisphere you may be seeing new growth.

The formal challenge is inspired by Welsh cynghanedd.
The essential idea of this is a repeated pattern of consonants with the two half-lines of a verse matching each other. (You could try it with two clauses in prose, too, of course!)
This is a Welsh example of the strict form in which the repeating pattern is easy to see:
clawdd i ddal / cal ddwy ddwylaw.
Our challenge does not call for such a strict form (unless you want to attempt it!), but you get the idea.
Cynghanedd can be combined with internal rhyme.
There is more information on cynghanedd here and here.

As usual, these two prompts can be filled separately or combined and they can be freely combined with other challenges.

New participants welcome.

For more details on the challenge see the linked post.

Nolofinwëan Week 2023

Nolofinwëan Week welcomes fan creations centering any members of the House of Fingolfin through the ages. You can participate with fanfiction, fanart, headcanons, close readings and musings, edits, or anything else that inspires you to celebrate these characters. Nolofinwëan Week will run on Tumblr and AO3 November 6-12, 2023.

Prompts

Inspirational, nonmandatory prompts:

  • Day 1: Noontide of Valinor - Darkening ● Fingolfin ● Anairë
  • Day 2: Exile - Arrival to Beleriand ● Fingon ● Argon ● Elenwë
  • Day 3: Mithrim - The Long Peace ● Turgon ● Aredhel ● Eöl
  • Day 4: Dagor Bragollach - War of Wrath ● Idril ● Maeglin ● Tuor ● Eärendil ● Elwing
  • Day 5: Lindon - War of the Ring ● Elrond ● Elros ● Gil-galad
  • Day 6: Fourth Age Middle-earth - Return to Valinor ● Númenórean descendants ● Peredhil descendants
  • Day 7: AUs, Canon divergences, Freeform ● Nolofinwëan OCs ● Canon ghosts ● Earlier canonical characters

To have your work shared on the event’s page, please mention the blog @nolofinweanweek in your post AND include the hashtags #nolofinweanweek and #nolofinweanweek2023 in the first 10 tags.

Links

November Calls for Papers

Something Mighty Queer: Mythopoeic Society’s Online Midwinter Seminar 2024

This virtual conference will be held 17-18 February, 2023.

We invite submissions for an online conference that focuses on queerness in fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction or other mythopoeic work. This can be queer representation within the work or engaging with mythopoeia through queer theory. “Queerness” is an intentionally ambiguous term, demonstrating the diversity of queer experiences, and the necessity of situating queerness as a liminal, complex paradigm. Queer theory is wider than the study of gender identity or sexuality, extending to taking positions against normativity and dominant modes of thought, and engaging with the indefinite.

Aspects of this topic might include but are certainly not limited to any of the following:

Otherness, stranger/outsider, the uncanny, marginalization and oppression, liminality and liminal spaces, depictions of queer people, thresholds, trans theory, gender performativity, readings and research that challenge normative or hegemonic perspectives.

Proposals Due: November 30, 2023

See the Something Mighty Queer guidelines for more information on the conference, submission guidelines, and where to send your proposal.

Tolkien at UVM 2023: The Psychologies of Middle-earth

This hybrid conference will be held 13 April 2024 at the University of Vermont.

This is our 20th annual conference. The theme is The Psychologies of Middle-earth. We are excited to have Dr Sara Brown as our keynote!

Please submit abstracts (150 words) to Dr. Chris Vaccaro (at cvaccaro@uvm.edu) by the deadline of January 15th 2024. The registration fee is $25 and covers breakfast and lunch and helps to pay for our tech support for the virtual modality.

Abstracts can cover various applications of psychology including myth, religion, art, sexuality, world building, race and ethnicity, feminism, queer theory, class consciousness, ideology, PTSD, trauma, desire, disability, and much more.

Proposals Due: January 15, 2024

Note that SWG members often attend this conference! Message Dawn if you are thinking of attending and want to meet up.

Mythmoot X: Homeward Bound

This hybrid conference will be held 22-25 June 2024 at the National Conference Center in Leesburg, Virginia.

Mythmoot annual conference brings together students, fans, staff, and friends of Signum University, the Mythgard Institute, Signum SPACE, and Signum Academy. Our online and in-person completely hybrid event combines the best of scholarship and friendship in four glorious days.

The call for papers for this conference has not been posted yet. The conference webpage is here.

Signum University Regional Moots

These small, regional conferences are held at various dates and locations. See the Regional Moots page for more details.


Many thanks to Robin Anne Reid and her Online Conference Project for handily compiling this information on a regular basis!

Survey: Motivation of Fanfiction Writers

Want to take part in a study on motivations for writing fanfiction and help out a fan studies researcher? Gaille Alyssa Stanley from the University of Cyberjaya (UOC), Malaysia, has received approval from their Ethics Review Board for their study and is looking for fans 18 years old and above who write and publish fanfiction online without receiving monetary profit.

The online questionnaire is 14 questions and estimated to take 1 hour. All information will remain private and confidential. The information will not be disclosed to anyone other than the researcher and supervisor. The data will be collected anonymously and no personal data (e.g., name and address) will be required, except for email address as a means of communication. The data of the study will be used solely for research purposes and will not be shared to any external parties.

You can find out more about the study and access contact information at the consent form link.

Scribbles & Drabbles Second Harvest Sign-Ups Open

Maybe you saw some of the art being reblogged and felt inspired. Maybe you just missed the first sign-up window.

If you want to join in on the fun, now is your chance! Scribbles & Drabbles welcomes another round of authors!

Minimum word count is 100, and fics must be in the collection by November 11.

Any questions? Drop us an ask!

Sign-up form

More details on Scribbles & Drabbles

Hungarian Tolkien Society: 11th International Tolkien Mailing Competition

The Hungarian Tolkien Society invites you to join the international “Quendi” category of the Tolkien Mailing Competition: five rounds of quizzes, riddles, and creative tasks. This category is organised in English, open to any individual participant—and this year also to teams of 2–5 people! The five rounds of the competition will last from November to April. The application deadline has been extended to 5 November, 2023.

Participation in the Quendi category requires a thorough knowledge of The HobbitThe Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. Other works by Tolkien may be needed occasionally, as some questions (riddles, quizzes, etc.) can refer to those, but you will have about four weeks for each round, that is, plenty of time to look up in the books everything you might need.

There will also be some creative challenges. For example, you may be asked to describe a situation, write a short poem, make a drawing or take a photograph, etc. We would like to be proud of our participants, so we ask you to share the rights of your creative productions royalty-free (and you accept this condition by your registration for the competition). The best of your works—with due credit to authors/artists—might be published by the Hungarian Tolkien Society, e.g. on our website, www.tolkien.hu, or in our journal, Lassi Laurië. (The last issue of which is boasting a TLV Quendi solution on the front page!) Please do not publish these works yourself without consulting us first, and especially not before the end of the competition. (Artwork submitted by teams is credited as teamwork by default, but you can add the name of the actual author/artist for each piece.)

You can participate in the Quendi category alone as an individual competitor, or you can participate as a member of a team of 2–5 people. The individual competitors and the teams will receive the same set of tasks, but the winner will be announced separately for individuals and teams.

As an individual competitor, you can make the decision to solve only the quizzes or only the creative tasks in each round: besides the absolute winners of the individual and team subcategories, the separate winners of the lexical and the creative parts will also be announced. This choice is only available for individual competitors, teams are expected to do the full version!

The contest starts in November and continues until April. Every month you will receive the questions of the next round, and you will have to submit your solutions until the indicated deadline.

If you want to participate, please fill in this online registration form.

Registration as an individual competitor: choose the “I am competing alone.” option on the form.

Registration as a team: each team member should fill in a registration form separately, choose the “I am a member of a team of 2-4 people.” option, and provide the same team name. We also need a contact person for each team. Please agree on a unique team name and choose a contact person from the team before starting the registration.

The application deadline is 5 November 2023.

For more information, sample challenges, and contact information, see the Hungarian Tolkien Society's Tolkien Mailing Competition webpage.

Fact-Checking Community little_details Is Back, Now on Dreamwidth

Little Details is a community that helps writers with their research and fact-checking. We're here to answer questions such as:

  • If I drop a brick on someone's head from twenty stories high, what will happen?
  • How big does an asteroid need to be to destroy the Earth?
  • How do I say "it's not you, it's me" in French?
  • Can people have freckles on their penises?

All types of fiction writers (professional, amateur, fanfiction, original, dungeon masters) are welcome to post questions. Our focus is factual accuracy rather than general writing advice.

This is the new home of the (now defunct) Little Details community on LiveJournal. Welcome back, everybody!

Fictober 2023

This event is open to all fanfiction and original fiction.

Start October the First. You do not have to do the prompts in order. Tag your posts with #fictober23. Please state if your entry is original fiction or fanfiction and what fandom at the top. State common warnings and triggers at the top and tag accordingly. I reserve the right to not reblog fics that I find inappropriate. I will reblog things here on @fictober-event, follow this blog to see all the entries.

Check the rules for any questions.

Here's the AO3 collection.

  1. "It's not too late, let's go."
  2.     "Don't worry, I got you."
  3.     "Okay, show me."
  4.     "Do you even know what this means?"
  5.     "You're the smartest person I know."
  6.     "I can't wait for you."
  7.     "Do you recognise this?"
  8.     "Give me that, before anything happens."
  9.     "I wouldn't do that if I were you."
  10.     "It's alright, I'm here now."
  11.     "You lost it. Well, we lost it."
  12.     "I'm not saying I didn't like it."
  13.     "Come with me, hurry."
  14.     "If you don't stop now —"
  15.     "Fine, explain it to me."
  16.     "Do you know a way out of here?"
  17.     "I never said it would be easy."
  18.     "We can't do this on our own."
  19.     "What if we're wrong?"
  20.     "This better be good."
  21.     "Just in case this doesn't work."
  22.     "Who takes care of you?"
  23.     "No, you won't understand, ever."
  24.     "Is it over? Is it really over?"
  25.     "Do I look like I knew that?"
  26.     "Honestly, why would I care?"
  27.     "I don't know if they will accept this."
  28.     "I may not get another chance to say this."
  29.     "That's all? Easy."
  30.     "Are you with me?"
  31.     "It's not your fault."

Panfandom Hanukkah Bingo 5784

WHAT: A fanworks bingo celebrating Jewish (and Jew-ish) characters across any and all fandoms. Write fanfiction and/or create graphics (moodboards, edits, vids, whatever you like) to fill prompts on this overall bingo card. During the 8 nights of Hanukkah, submit your fills to the AO3 collection and/or post them on Tumblr to be reblogged and added to the Bingo Masterpost.

WHY: Jewish characters and Jewish fans are often overlooked or erased during the Winter Holiday Season in favor of “Secret Santa” exchanges, Christmas-themed fics, and the idea that ~Hanukkah is Jewish Christmas~ (which spoiler for all fics in this bingo: it’s not). This panfandom Bingo challenge is to celebrate Hanukkah on its own terms and give Jewish characters and fans a place to breathe. :)

Signing up is totally optional. If you want to sign up and get an individualized Bingo Card, then you have between 10/1/2023 (October 1) and 12/1/2023 (December 1) to do so. If you want to use the GENERAL Bingo Card, which will be posted on Tumblr on 10/7/2023, then you do not need to sign up to participate. You can sign up to receive an individualized Bingo Card here.

Participation is open to anyone! You do not need to be Jewish to participate in the Panfandom Hanukkah Bingo! If you are not Jewish, though, we request that you have a Jewish sensitivity reader or beta reader before posting your piece and that you reblog and promote the work of Jewish creators in the event. MESSIANIC STORIES ARE NOT ALLOWED.

Please let us know of any character(s) or fandom(s) we should promote this event to, and please feel free to promote this event yourselves on Discord, Twitter, Instagram, whatever! We would love to see this event grow this year.