A couple weeks ago, we announced that we were looking for bingo cards of prompts for our upcoming Potluck Bingo challenge. That challenge is now live, and you can sample the five-star offerings of prompts, beautifully crafted and served on an array of bingo cards!
We generally run one bingo card challenge each year (after the uproarious success of Back to Middle-earth Month 2012, which the SWG mods who lived through it still regard with a mixture of awe and trauma—trawema, if you will), so if you want to create a fanwork or write a comment for this challenge (and we hope you do), then a quick rundown of how bingo card challenges work is in order. We are not calling numbers for this challenge; you can create for any prompt you want on any card you want. If you made a card, you are under no obligation to play it, or you can go wild on your own prompts. You can combine multiple prompts into a single fanwork (from the same card or different cards). The various ways that prompts combine is part of the fun of bingo challenges!
Of course, if you've played actual bingo in a drafty church hall with blue-haired old ladies and their array of lucky charms and fierce combativeness, you know how rabid bingo aficionados can be about winning bingo. Our challenges don't expect you to fill lines, but we of course welcome you to try! There are special stamps available for participants who do. Let a mod know if you've achieved bingo, which we define as filling prompts in horizontal, vertical, or diagonal lines or (for the truly ambitious!) all prompts on a card. There is also a special stamp for players who play multiple boards.
As always, all types of fanwork are welcome on our archive. (If you're new to our challenges, find our challenge guidelines here.) We also have bingo boards for leaving comments, and we are accepting new cards for the duration of the challenge. The Potluck Bingo page has guidelines and templates for making cards.
This challenge runs through January 15, 2025, but because the first challenge of the new year is always an amnesty challenge where you can create for any of our 2024 challenges you missed and receive the stamps, you will have until February 15, 2025, to post responses to this challenge and receive stamps.
In other challenge-related news, we had several members collaborate to solve the Orctober riddle for last month's challenge. I've set up the form for requesting riddle clues to email me when there are new requests, so if you haven't solved it yet (or even started!) but want to try, feel free to keep sending clue requests.
And a few other reminders: Tolkien Meta Week begins December 8, and we are still accepting proposals for presentations at our July 19 Mereth Aderthad hybrid event!
SWG News
New Challenge: Epic 80s
This month's challenge features hundreds of fresh prompts from the bodacious decade of the 1980s.
Cultus Dispatches: Communities Do Comment
Comment data from the SWG underscores community as an essential component to a robust commenting culture.
Instadrabbling Sessions for July, August, and September
Instadrabbling continues on the first Saturday of each month on our Discord server.
New Fanworks
Is it raining with you? by AdmirableMonster [Writing]
In the last days of Númenor, two very different men meet in Umbar and fall in love.
(Please note that while this work is heavily inspired by Disco Elysium, no knowledge of the game is necessary to read the fic!)
Read more ...Wrensong and Roses by Isilme_among_the_stars [Writing]
Concerned by his responses to the paraphernalia of healing, Fingon steals Maedhros from his room for an impromptu garden excursion. Maedhros battles with dark thoughts.
Read more ...Bon(e)fire by Fuin [Writing]
On the night before the battle, Caranthir and his ally share thoughts about their peoples' traditions:
Burning bones ward off evil.
Read more ...McShady by Babblecat [Writing]
Melkor has himself a bad time in the Void.
Read more ...
Updated Fanworks
A Thousand Winds that Blow by StarSpray [Writing]
When uneasy dreams bring him back into Beleriand, Daeron finds a pair of twins who have lost their home, and an enemy who has lost himself. The Shadow's reach is growing ever longer, and if they are to survive, they must do it together.
Read more ...Nasyalossë by Lovimmy3365 [Writing]
Erestor lay up against a tree, brown washed to black in the wet of the snow. The black disc of the new moon sailed across the dark sky. Erestor wished it were gone. He had no need to look into dark eyes any longer.
He was dying.
(AKA Erestor unwittingly travels back in time to the days between the Dagor Bragollach and the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, meets the sons of Feanor, Thingol and his ilk, many Laiquendi, many Dwarves, and Men besides, and THEN decides to solve the drowning of Beleriand himself. This has nothing to do with his personal problems. Nope. Not at all. Erestor is having regular feelings.)
Read more ...Until the Stars are All Alight by Dagstjarna [Writing]
Reembodied in Aman, Celebrimbor decides to return to Middle earth to help heal the darkness and hurt wrought by the ring.
Read more ...From That Rubble by StarSpray [Writing]
Fëanor shrugged, studying the contents of his wine glass. “Something must be done about that house. It will fall down eventually.”
“It does not follow that it must be you that tears it down single-handedly. Are you sure you do not want help?”
“It’s not as though I have much else to do. I need to build something new there,” he said after a few moments. “To do that, I must first clear away the old and broken things.”
Decades out of Mandos, too many things in Fëanor's life remain broken. He can't do anything except wait for his sons to come to him, but he can do something about the old and crumbling house where they once lived.
Read more ...The Mirror Crack'd by AdmirableMonster [Writing]
Rescued from a brutal Angband hunt, an ex-thrall with a strange and powerful artifact embedded in his spine is brought to Himring, for it is one of the only places in Beleriand which welcomes such folk. Though he has no memories of his life before, Anniavas slowly becomes accustomed to his new life and finds he has a queer connection with Maedhros, Himring's lord. As their intimacy grows, however, so do the dangers surrounding them, both without and within. What secrets are hidden inside the depths of Anniavas's lost memories--and how will those with whom he is forging and deepening bonds react, when those secrets are at last revealed?
Read more ...Eä's Redemption by AaronAzrael [Writing]
This is my new poetical attempt to add my own interpretation to Tolkien's Cosmology as to Eru's Creation and the Valar's minds and behind-the-scene providence reasons and mechanisms.. I often review Eä as part of our own world, just in another dimension, this is why I have always seriously thought on the matter who the Ainur are, who Eru is, how he matches our own religious pantheon, and this has been conducted after serious research of many esoteric teachings of our own planet's heritage.
Read more ...Around the World and Web
Scribbles and Drabbles 2026
Scribbles & Drabbles is a fic and art exchange with a minimum word count of 100 words.
Tolkien Disability Pride 2026
This Tumblr event focuses on ALL creative works focusing on disability in Tolkien's universe.
Tolkien Gen Week 2026
Tolkien Gen Week will run from July 6-12, 2026 to appreciate all of the incredible characters and relationships within Tolkien’s legendarium that fall under the broad category of “gen.”