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My Slashy Valentine 2024 Sign-Ups Open

From the Years of the Trees to the Fourth Age, from sultry tales of the Silmarillion to romances in the Ring Wars … sound familiar? That’s right, Slashy Swaps are back and it’s once again time to make your Tolkien fanfic dreams come true.

My Slashy Valentine is a hand-matched slash fiction exchange focused on the people of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth. Sign ups are now OPEN so spread the word, recruit your friends and fellow authors, and get ready for MSV 2024.

Sign-up Period: December 7th to December 21st
Assignments distributed: by December 28th
Deadline for first time participants: January 31st, 2024
Deadline for veteran participants: February 7th, 2024
Archive opens: February 14th, 2024

Take a look through our rules and faq – or on AO3 if you’re on the mobile app, because Tumblr – and then come along to our SIGN UP PAGE and share the adventure.

Silmarillion Daily Newsletter

Silmarillion Daily (2024) is set up and ready for subscriptions! if people are interested in seeing The Silmarillion in chronological order over the course of a year.

Every day from January 20th to December 31st will cover three years of in-book time, running from the Awakening of the Elves at Cuiviénen (Years of the Trees and Years of the Sun will be treated the same). January 1st to 19th will be a prologue covering material prior to the Awakening of the Elves.

You can subscribe to Silmarillion Daily here.

LotR20

LOTR20 (11–17th December 2023) is a week-long event celebrating the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. The event will run from Monday to Sunday, with three prompts for each day. You can choose one or more of these prompts, and you can decide how you'd like to interpret them.

Tag your original works with #lotrweek (not #lotr20) and they will be reblogged here!

Any questions? FAQ list

LOTR20 prompts:

Day 1 (11th Dec): memory | history | home

Day 2 (12th Dec): language | culture | beauty

Day 3 (13th Dec): fear | courage | adventure

Day 4 (14th Dec): friendship | family | loyalty

Day 5 (15th Dec): loss | sacrifice | despair

Day 6 (16th Dec): triumph | healing | hope

Day 7 (17th Dec): free day – 20th anniversary of The Return of the King

Thorin's Spring Forge 2024

Calling all Thorin fans! We are happy to announce that sign ups for Thorin’s Spring Forge (TSF) 2024 are now open! 

What is TSF? TSF is a minibang style event where writers and artists come together to create fanworks centred on Thorin Oakenshield. Fanworks can be based on the book or the movie version of the character. Any pairing or gen are welcome and we look forward to seeing what you create!

You can participate in this event as a:

• Writer;
•  Artist;
•  Beta reader;
•  Pinch hitter (writer);
• Pinch hitter (artist).

Explanations of what each of these roles is can be found in our FAQ. You may sign up for more than one role, but there is a maximum of two fanworks per participant (i.e. you may write two fics, or create two artworks, or do one of each). 

Participating authors create a short summary/synopsis of a fic, which is posted anonymously for artists to view and claim. Artists will then create art based on the fic they chose, and authors will write a complete fic (minimum 2,500 words). 

Sign up as a writer

Sign up as an artist

Sign up as a beta reader or pinch hitter

Sign ups for authors and artists will be open until January 5th 11:59 pm EST.

Sign ups for beta readers and pinch hitters will remain open for the duration of the event!

Please be sure to familiarise yourself with our rules and schedule before signing up! 

Questions? Visit our FAQ or contact us via thorinsspringforge@gmail.com, send us ask or DM on Tumblr. 

We have also opened up a form to submit prompts!

If you are unsure of what you want to write: Check out the submissions.

If you have an idea you want to share: Add something to the form.

Prompt amnesty at tolkienshortfanworks on Dreamwidth

As previously, the December challenge at the tolkienshortfanworks community on Dreamwidth is a prompt amnesty.



Although our challenges don't expire and prompt fills can be posted at any time, this is a special invitation for you to write any idea a prompt may have given you and that you didn't get around to writing, or complete a prompt fill you had started working on, or cross-post something that you wrote for another challenge with one of our prompts in mind and never got around to posting to the community.



Also, you can just pick any previous prompt or challenge that tickles your fancy and recombine prompt elements, too, if you like. 

Check out the linked post for a full prompt list and more details on these challenges.

December 2023 Calls for Papers

Centre for Fantasy Literature Studies: Magic System as the Key Element in Fantasy Worldbuilding

This conference is hosted online on 25th –26th January at 11am (+2 GMT) by the Centre for Fantasy Literature Studies at the Taras Shevchenko Institute of Literature, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

How does one choose a magic system for a fantasy world? How do we employ magic to build a dialogue with reality? Fantasy fiction is brimming with magic systems ranging from ritual magic to elemental, from dominating and manipulative magic to the one that is shaped by a dialogue between equals. A magic system in fantasy literature can be defined as a conglomeration of magic sources, manifestations, practices and implements that interact with one another and the environment and are employed by magic users to produce an impact on the world at various levels or to create an illusion of such an impact in accordance with the in-universe laws. You are invited to participate in a conversation about the principles of magic system modelling and functioning in fantasy fiction. Issues to be discussed include but are not limited to:

• Magic systems in fantasy short stories / novels / series / worlds;
• Magic systems typology within one world or at the metagenre level;
• Magic systems in action: sources, mechanisms, implementations, potentials and limitations;
• Magic systems as a space for creative experiments and collaboration between
• the author and the reader. Magic systems and fandoms;
• Magic system analysis through the prism of poetics, genre, narrative theory, etc;
• Correlation of fantasy magic systems with contemporary social, psychological, political concerns (gender, postcolonial, environmental studies, etc.).

Proposals are accepted till 10th January 2024.

To submit a proposal, please fill in the form.

Languages: English and Ukrainian

25-minute presentations will be followed by 5-minute discussions

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!

"Disability in Tolkien Studies" by Clare Moore

Clare Moore is a Tolkien scholar who works on disability in Tolkien, among other areas. Her annotated bibliography includes a list of scholarship that investigates this topic.

White Oliphaunt Gift Exchange 2023

Welcome! The White Oliphaunt is a Tolkien fandom gift exchange. Similar to a other gift exchanges, everyone who signs up to participate will make and also receive a present from someone else. As with real-life White Elephant exchanges, we encourage-but do not require-gifts to be humorous in nature!

Schedule

• November 17th: Sign-up forms are open

Use this form to sign up for the exchange!

• November 30ths: Sign-up forms are closed

Sign-ups close at 23:59 EST

• December 1st: Assignments are sent via email

As there is currently only one mod, this date is an approximation. If there is a delay, I will be sure to let you know!

• December 25th: Anonymous posting and last call for dropouts

Starting on December 25th, you may post your gift anonymously. Simply do not tag the recipient of your gift (Make sure you remember to tag them on the 31st!)

• December 31st: Gift reveal!

Post your gift and tag your giftee! All gifts should be tagged with your giftee’s blog, this blog @WhiteOliphaunt and use the hashtag #WO202 (If you do not wish to have your gift reblogged by White Oliphaunt, please let us know). All gifts MUST be posted by January 1st 23:59 EST

Links

Sign-up Form
FAQ

Tolkien Family Week 2023

Tolkien Family Week is a Tumblr event dedicated to showing appreciation for familiar relationships in Tolkien's work, be it The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, or beyond.

Below is a list of non-mandatory prompts to take some inspiration from:

Day One Parent-child relationship - From Lúthien and Dior to Samwise and Elanor, on this day we encourage you to explore the relationships between mothers and fathers and sons and daughters!

Day Two Siblings - Tolkien presents us with many pairs of siblings throughout all the ages of Arda. This day is devoted to relationships between brothers and sisters, such as Fili and Kili or Galadriel and Finrod.

Day Three Extended Family - Cousins, uncles, nieces, grandparents. Family trees goes beyond the traditional household members. Finwë with his numerous grandchildren, Théoden with Éomer and Éowyn - this day is dedicated to them.

Day Four Cut Ties - Families can break apart. Disagreements, rivalries, separation, death - their presence is a never-leaving shadow in Arda. One only has to look at the likes of Fëanor and Fingolfin.

Day Five Found Family - Families can break apart, yes, but at other times, they can also be in found in unlikely places. From kidnap fam to adopted distant cousins, this day is for exploring them.

Day Six Ancestors and their Legacy - Every family has its roots somewhere. On this day we look back to where the great families in Tolkien's works came from and what those ancestors left behind for their descendants.

Day Seven Freeform - Did we forget about something or is there a prompt you want to revisit? Feel free to use this day for any family related content!

The week will run 20th to 26th November 2023 and will be hosted by @tilions and @armenelols. We will operate in a mixture of queued posts and direct reblogs.

Some minor clarifications:

• Please tag @tolkienfamilyweek and put #tolkienfamilyweek in the first five tags of your post so that we can find it
• Feel free to send us an ask should your post not be reblogged
• OCs are welcome
• All kinds of content is appreciated - edits, art, writing, headcanons, analysis, let your imagination run wild
• The ask box is open for any remaining questions!

We are looking forward to your creations!

Writing With Color Askbox Is Open!

In the summer of 2014, bookworm Colette Aburime founded WritingWithColor, WWC for short, to help writers add diverse representation of People of Color (POC) to their creative works, with a focus on Western fiction. At the time, the majority white-run advice blogs were unequipped for POC-focused Q&A. Some even banned questions about writing POC outright. 

Having a passion for reading, especially books that actually had a variety of BIPOC main characters, she felt compelled to bridge the gap in the writing advice world. Thus, WritingWithColor was born.

Since then, WritingWithColor has gained over 100,000 followers! We are committed as ever to help writers create more respectful, diverse, and inclusive works. With a changing and ever growing team of diverse moderators, we serve a broader demographic to promote thoughtful representation of marginalized groups that are not one’s own.

Writing With Color opens their askbox during the month of November to aid writers who share their mission. If you'd like to ask a question, start here.