Akallabêth in August

Akallabêth in August was an event run in 2009 as a more elaborate version of the annual Akallabêth in August challenge, which originated in 2006. The Akallebêth in August event was "a month-long 'retelling' of the Akallabêth in the form of stories, poems, ficlets, and artwork focused on the history and events of the Second Age"1 that resulted in forty-three fanworks (fiction, art, and poetry) by fifteen different creators. Creators signed up for an event from the Second Age as a prompt but were not "required to write about that event (although that is acceptable as well!); it only means that your story should fall around the time when that event occurred and, therefore, show something of what life was like at that period in history."2 At least one fanwork was posted daily from August 1 through September 5, 2009, chronologically through the events described in Tolkien's Akallabêth, on a special webpage designed for the event.

View the Akallabêth in August project here.

Links

Archivist's Notes

Progress: All pages should be restored to the original design with links within the SWG functioning. If you notice any broken images, page layouts, or SWG links, please alert Dawn. Some links point to outside the SWG, to pages that are no longer available; those are being left with their original URLs.

The idea of Akallabêth in August as an event larger than the annual challenge was proposed by Dawn on the locked SWG moderator LiveJournal community on 16 March 2009:

Firstly, each year in August, we run the "Akallabeth in August" challenge, which is basically an invitation to re-read the Akallabeth and write a story about it. This year, I was wondering if we might do something a bit more. Give the Second Agers their own month of sorts. :) We have a lot of really talented Second-Age writers, so I think there'd be interest.

In a comment on that post, Angelica suggested the format the event might take:

Akallabeth in August: yes, maybe take different moments of the Numenor story, one each week of the month: Elros and the foundation, the Mariner kings and the colonial empire in Middle-earth, the Sauron affair, and the Downfall (just what came to my mind, too lazy to pick the books)

Akallabêth in August would end up with an event from the Akallabêth for each day in August (and slightly into September), with at least one fanwork for each day. This frequency was determined by the level of interest from participants; as of the "official proposal" that Dawn posted on the moderator LJ on 26 May 2009, the format had been finalized but the frequency "depends on the level of participation more than anything."

Akallabêth in August was motivated in part by wanting to give the spotlight to Second Age writers during a time when First Age Elves received most of the attention from both creators and readers. This was an early example of how the SWG uses events to draw positive attention toward subjects in and genres of fanworks that might otherwise be overwhelmed by more popular topics. The SWG itself was started with the intention that it could serve as a single gathering place to discuss The Silmarillion and its fanworks during a time when The Lord of the Rings was overwhelmingly more popular due to the Jackson films.

During the early planning phase, the SWG moderators also made the decision to ask the Númenórean Writers Guild, headed by Lady Roisin, if they wanted to be involved. Lady Roisin did indeed end up heavily involved in the project, as is evident in the credit given to her in the acknowledgements on the project homepage. Lady Roisin would become a damaging person to some in the fandom after faking a terminal illness and her death and setting up sockpuppets to stoke conflict between fandom members. This conflict was already brewing on other fandom groups in 2009. The moderators have left up acknowledgements of her contributions in the interest of preserving history but want to acknowledge the harm she caused to many in our community at the time.

Akallabêth in August was officially announced in the June 2009 newsletter. The call for contributors asked for short stories, ficlets, poems, and art centered on a specific topic that the creator would choose from a list. Fanworks should be created new for the event. Although a fanworks retelling of the Akallabêth, the call for contributors directly addressed that the project was not meant to be a "rehashing" but allowed a lot of room for different interpretations:

This project is not intended as a substitution for or a "rehashing" of the published Akallabêth. We all own The Silmarillion and can read what Tolkien had to say about the Second Age if we want to. This project is meant to go beyond the published text to show the events of the Second Age from a variety of perspectives, illuminating characters, events, concepts, and cultures that are only sketched in the text. ... We will quite likely end up with conflicting views and characterizations, and that is fine: The opportunity to look at the Second Age from a variety of perspectives is one of our goals for the project.

The SWG did not yet have the proscription against "one true canon" readings in its Site Etiquette (this would originate on its Discord and eventually be added on the website as well, the August 2020 rewrite of the Site Etiquette in anticipation of the site rebuild). However, the call for participants for Akallabêth in August shows that multiperspectivity was valued in the group and reflected in its policies from early in the SWG's history.

Throughout June, there were multiple rounds of claims for topics, ending up in some creators contributing multiple pieces. Rhapsody posted the final call for participants on 16 July 2009. In the final week of July, the illuminated manuscript design, which was painted and displayed via CSS by Dawn Felagund, was approved by the moderator team. The project was released on 1 August 2009 with daily updates on the website and posts to the SWG's LiveJournal.

References

  1. Akallabêth in August 2009 (call for participants), originally posted to the SWG website in June 2009, archived via the Wayback Machine, 26 January 2021.
  2. Ibid.