In honor of twenty years of Back to Middle-earth Month (B2MeM) and as part of our ongoing effort to restore all of our Special Projects on our website, we are going "back to B2MeM" in our newsletters this month to look back at the history of B2MeM on the SWG.

2007 was the year. Tolkien fandom clearly felt that they needed a monthly holiday, and B2MeM seemed to fit the bill. Middle-earth News posted a "Celebrate Middle-earth Month" (CMEM-07) challenge that was a minor reworking of the anonymously submitted B2MeM 2006 challenge. The SWG and the drabble community There-n-Back Again both posted their own challenges. There-n-Back's challenge was participatory in nature: a daily drabble prompt based on "the alphabet of Middle-earth."

Our challenge on the SWG took a different approach, partly due to the fact that, as Silmarillion creators, we weren't really going back to anything; our corner of the fandom—while impacted by the films leaving theaters—relied less on film fans than the Lord of the Rings fandom did. Our event was presented as a "journey through the history of Arda" with a new place-based quotation from The Silmarillion each day.

When B2MeM 2007 debuted, the SWG's website was less than a year old. Beyond a mention in the newsletter, B2MeM 2007 never existed on our website; it was presented entirely on our LiveJournal community. In the interest of historical preservation, we've compiled the original challenge text and the thirty-one quotes we shared that year. You can find the B2MeM 2007 text and quotes here.

Like the 2006 challenge, B2MeM 2007 was rather haphazardly embarked upon. While researching the history of how it came to be, I was unable to find a single email mentioning it, either in my personal email or in the moderator email. It seems the event came back around on the calendar, I felt we needed to participate too on the SWG, and the quote idea was likely a low-effort way to do our part. This would be the last year that B2MeM would fly by the seat of its pants, and beginning with the 2008 event, it would become increasingly elaborate with the focus less on simply appreciating Tolkien's world and more on creating fanworks about it.

Remember that B2MeM is still alive! You can find more about this year's event here.

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. 

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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

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