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Ainur Secret Santa 2023

This event is there to celebrate all the Ainur across all Tolkien Works (the Silm, Lost Tales, The Hobbit, LOTR)

Upon registering you will be asked to submit your own prompt + additional information regarding your preferences (do not hesitate to be thorough, the more details the better the mod can assign you someone matching you)

The assignment will be done by grouping participants by similarities. 

• The sign-up open on November 09th and will be closed on November 30th 12am(UTC+01)

• The ao3 collection will open on January 16th and will remain open until January 26th, Midnight UTC+01

• The Reveal will happen on January 27th, 3PM(utc+01)

• If you happen to be unable to post on time please contact the mod and we will arrange a solution.

Rules

• The total wordcount of your fic should be at least 1000 words.

• AI generated works are prohibited without exceptions.

• NSFW, Dead Dove and dark works are accepted, as long as they are properly tagged.

• One submission by giftee.

• Play the game and do not spoil the surprise to your giftee.

Additional Links

Sign-Up Form
Frequently Asked Questions
Ask Box

Lord of the Rings Secret Santa 2023

So, it's that time of the year again: time to sign up for the Lord of the Rings Secret Santa exchange! Slash, femslash, het and gen; you can request it all, so why not join in?

2023 is a year of special magnificence for this exchange, as it has now been going for TWENTY years! We'd love to see you join us for this anniversary.

Lord of the Rings Secret Santa has been a traditional exchange since its inception, but we continue to adapt and refine the exchange to best serve all participants. The exchange has been in the form of a prompt meme since 2020.

If you are new to the format, AO3 has a helpful FAQ here.

Timeline (2023)

• Prompt Posting: November 1st to 30th
• Claiming: December 1st to 31st
• Collection Open for Posting: December 1st to 31st
• All Fills Due: December 31st

You will be able to post up to 2 prompts, and we will do our best to make sure that at least one of your prompts is filled.

Please note that this is an FPF challenge. (i.e. Fictional, not real people fiction/RPF.) We're always open to all the Peoples and Ages of Middle-earth, which means that characters from The Hobbit and The Rings of Power are welcome too!

The Rules (2023)

1. You will be able to post up to 2 prompts between November 1st and 30th, and we will do our best to make sure at least one of your prompts is filled.
2. Your fill is due December 31st 11:59 pm Pacific Time (you can check what that is in your time zone here). Please post it to AO3 (and nowhere else, until January 10th).
3. As a matter of fairness, please make your story more than 750 words (1000 is better).
4. Once claiming has opened, please only claim a prompt if you plan on actually fulfilling your end of the bargain, and please only claim one prompt at a time. After you have completed your fill, you may claim a new one.
5. Signing up: the sign up form can be found here (or here if the main link gives you an error message). If you need help with signing up, please don't hesitate to contact the mods at lotrsesa[AT]gmail.com.
6. Claiming a prompt: use the "Claim" button next to the prompt you want to claim. (You can find open prompts under "Prompts" in the sidebar.) Several people can claim the same prompt. You can also claim a prompt without having submitted any of your own.
7. It's a good idea to follow us here on Tumblr or join the Dreamwidth community so you can keep track of any admin posts.

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.

• 2023 Sign-Up Post (Public)
• How to Post Your Word Counts (Members Only)
• Questions for the mods go here (Public)

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

• About
• Prompts
• AO3 Collection
• FAQ

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 Hobbit, The 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!