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Tolkien OC Week on Tumblr

This  week on Tumblr is a fandom event for OCs and underdeveloped characters in Tolkien's world. It celebrates both characters of Tolkien’s world and original characters that need more love, by creating and reblogging all kind of fanworks, like fanfiction, fanart, fanvideos, fancrafts, headcanons, playlists, edits, moodboards etc. It will run from  25th July - 31st July 2022.

Event schedule for 2022:

Day 1 (25th July): Diversity - Whether it’s sexual orientation, gender, disability, neurodiversity, or race, create a fanwork about an OC who adds diversity to Tolkien’s world.

Day 2 (26th July): Shipping - Create a fanwork about an OC that you ship with a canon character. An established marriage, a developing queerplatonic relationship, or a one-night stand… canon compliant or AU… it can be any sort of ship you want!

Day 3 (27th July): Gaps and Ghosts - Curufin didn’t pull Celebrimbor out of thin air, so who was the other parent? Who are the Blue Wizards and where did they go? And did you know that the ringbearer was originally written as Bilbo’s son Bingo? Create a fanwork based around an abandoned or never-established character, or flesh out someone who we know nothing about, such as Nazgûl #6.

Day 4 (28th July): Mary Sues - Do you have an OC who is Galadriel’s powerful younger daughter, sent to modern times for her protection, who reappeared as a teenager just in time for her to join the Fellowship? Well, so do I! Here is your permission to use any and every Mary Sue trope you can think of in your fanwork. Modern girls in Middle Earth. Self inserts. Tenth walkers. Play it straight or make it a parody, we’ll take anything.

Day 5 (29th July): Background Characters - Who else was watching Frodo’s song at the Prancing Pony? What’s it like to be a rank-and-file Fëanorian, going into exile over an argument that has nothing to do with you? What’s it like to work at the Houses of Healing, unable to stop your patients from dying of the black breath? Create a fanwork exploring a character you would find in the background of the main action.

Day 6 (30th July): Original Peoples- Instead of just one character, create a fanwork about a group of people who aren’t explored in canon, like the Avari, the Drúedain, the dwarves of the Iron Hills, or anything else you imagine might exist in Middle Earth. You can even invent your own race of speaking people!

Day 7 (31st July): Freeform - OC week is all about freedom, so today, create a piece of fanwork about whatever you want!

More details at the linked post.

Teitho Challenge for July and August

The Teitho competition is back up and running with a challenge for July/August, asking for a special recipe with five fictional ingredients.

They write:

For the months of July and August, we once again have a special recipe for you to prepare. The ingredients are all listed below, but how you mix-n-mash them is completely up to you! As all great cooks make recipes their own by adding little touches and intriguing twists, don’t forget to spice the result with your favourite flavours. This month, let's see what you can bake for our hungry Middle-Earth and Arda appetites!



The five ingredients are:



•Belt

•Grass

•Memory

•Sunrise

•Vessel



Each item on the list must appear in your story at least once, either physically or in dialogue. You don't have to use the exact same wording or meaning —for example, your story can have an actual belt or someone belting a song. It can reference a sunrise or take place at sunrise. Vessel has many meanings, from a physical mode of transport to metaphorical ones as well.



There are many ways to go about this challenge, and we look forward to seeing how you use the ingredients to create your master recipe! The deadline for this theme will be August 31.

 

More details about Teitho challenges on the linked website.

Multifandom Poetry Fest 2022

Welcome to the sixth annual Multifandom Poetry Fest, a prompt fest for poetry for all fandoms! This event takes place on Dreamwidth.

Rules

1) Leave a prompt in the form of fandom, characters or relationships, prompt. If you don’t want to specify the fandom or characters, you can say "any." One prompt per comment. Leave as many prompts as you like.

2) Reply to other people’s prompts with poems. The poems can be any length or form, or no form. Quality isn’t important--the point is to have fun, not to produce deathless works of art. (Any deathless works of art produced are just a bonus.)

You can leave prompts or check out the prompts already posted here.

Tolkien Appreciation Week 2022

Amidst all the incredible appreciation events going on, we want to invite you to join in on appreciating the literary works & cinematic adaptations of Tolkien! Tolkien Week 2022 is a 10-day event which will run from July 11th–15th and July 18th–22nd on Tumblr and AO3. Each day has three different prompts for gifs, art, fics and other media types! Feel free to do as many days as you’d like and whichever prompt(s) you prefer! Don’t forget to tag #tolkienweek so we can share your creations, and follow @tolkienweek on Tumblr for updates on the event!

We also have an AO3 collection here!

PROMPTS:

• July 11th: favorite character | space | journey
• July 12th: favorite location | colors | home
• July 13th: favorite quote | light & dark | love
• July 14th: favorite story arc | compare & contrast | beginnings/endings
• July 15th: favorite outfit | bruised & battered | heartbreak
• July 18th: favorite hero or villain | faceless/silhouettes | solidarity/comradery
• July 19th: favorite minor character | leaders | comfort
• July 20th: favorite motif | weapons & objects | mystery
• July 21st: favorite relationship | close ups | fellowship
• July 22nd: favorite movie | art/architecture | hope

New Collection of Tolkien's Second Age Writings Coming in November

J.R.R. Tolkien famously described the Second Age of Middle-earth as a "dark age, and not very much of its history is (or need be) told." And for many years readers would need to be content with the tantalizing glimpses of it found within the pages of The Lord of the Rings and its appendices, including the forging of the Rings of Power, the building of the Barad-dûr and the rise of Sauron.

It was not until Christopher Tolkien published The Silmarillion after his father’s death that a fuller story could be told. Although much of the book’s content concerned the First Age of Middle-earth, there were at its close two key works that revealed the tumultuous events concerning the rise and fall of the island of Númenor. Raised out of the Great Sea and gifted to the Men of Middle-earth as a reward for aiding the angelic Valar and the Elves in the defeat and capture of the Dark Lord Morgoth, the kingdom became a seat of influence and wealth; but as the Númenóreans’ power increased, the seed of their downfall would inevitably be sown, culminating in the Last Alliance of Elves and Men.

Even greater insight into the Second Age would be revealed in subsequent publications, first in Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth, then expanded upon in Christopher Tolkien’s magisterial twelve-volume The History of Middle-earth, in which he presented and discussed a wealth of further tales written by his father, many in draft form.

Now, adhering to the timeline of "The Tale of Years" in the appendices to The Lord of the Rings, editor Brian Sibley has assembled into one comprehensive volume a new chronicle of the Second Age of Middle-earth, told substantially in the words of J.R.R. Tolkien from the various published texts, with new illustrations in watercolor and pencil by the doyen of Tolkien art, Alan Lee.

The new collection will be available beginning November 15, 2022.

July Challenge at tolkienshortfanworks (Dreamwidth)

The July Challenge at tolkienshortfanworks on Dreamwidth has been posted.

Here is our thematic prompt and our formal challenge for June:

The thematic prompt is: summer storms and other explosions!

The formal challenge is exposition, in any form you choose to interpret this.

You could write an exposition of an explosion, but the two prompts can be filled entirely independently.

The challenge can be freely combined with other prompts and new members are always welcome to join.

More details on the challenge at the linked post.

Tolkien Gen Week 2022

Tolkien Gen Week will run July 4-10, 2022 on Tumblr!

This is a week to appreciate all of the incredible characters and relationships within Tolkien’s legendarium that fall under the broad category of “gen.” There is a great wealth of wonderful gen content in the Tolkien fandom, but those creations are not always the most visible because of the shipping-focused nature of fandom at large. This week is an effort to give them the appreciation they deserve.

Tolkien Gen Week began in 2018 and occurred again in 2020 and 2021, and we’re back for more from July 4-10, 2022!

Any content and creations are welcome as long as it is non-romantic and non-sexual! You can create edits, gifs, fanart, fanfic, fanmixes, and more! Please tag your posts with #tolkiengenweek AND @ mention this blog @tolkiengenweek​ so they can be easily found. If your submission turns into a long post, please put what you can beneath a “Keep reading” divider.

Below are some prompts for each day of the week. They are not mandatory, but they are here to inspire you. This page will lead to an explanation for each one. This year, we are expanding the number of prompts per day from one to three!

DAY ONE: Family ● Mentorships ● Community
DAY TWO: Friendship ● Animals ● Group Dynamic
DAY THREE: Gray Spaces ● Enemies and Rivalries ● Fealty
DAY FOUR: Solo ● Work and Craft ● Language
DAY FIVE: Culture ● Diversity ● Traditions
DAY SIX: Environment ● Places ● Objects and Symbols
DAY SEVEN: Freeform

This event is being organized by @arofili. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to message this blog or my main.

For further clarification, check out our about, FAQ, code of conduct, and prompts pages! Happy creating!!

Mobile links are accessible here.

Omentielva Nertea: The Ninth International Conference on J.R.R. Tolkien's Invented Languages

4–7 August 2022
Collegium Maius, Jagiellonian University, Kraków.

We will be staying at Hotel Zaleze in nearby Katowice, where we will also have some of our sessions. We plan to make one of the evening sessions an Onatsie, allowing those not present to participate via Zoom. The conference fee is 825 PLN. As usual, this includes bed and board for the duration of the conference.

See the event page for more information on presenting a paper or registering for the conference.

Tolkien South Asian Week 2022

From June 13^th to June 19^th, 2022 on Tumblr, this week will celebrate South Asian peoples, cultures, and lives through Tolkien’s Legendarium. TSAW stemmed from aims to diversify and enrich high fantasy, Tolkien’s literary works, and fandom.

Guidelines

• Tag your entries with #tsaw22 and mention @arwenindomiel;
• Everyone is free to participate, you don’t have to be South Asian;
• All creations should be Safe for Work so nothing explicit;
• Creations of all kinds are welcome: graphics, art, fic, meta etc;
• Bigotry will not be tolerated (non-exhaustive list here).

Non-Mandatory Prompts

• DAY 1: Ainur  |  Monochrome/one colour  |  Avari  |  Etymology
• DAY 2: Elves  |  Minimalism  |  Balrogs  |  Tragic hero/heroine
• DAY 3:  Dwarves  |  Faceless  |  Laiquendi  |  Foreshadowing
• DAY 4: Men  |  Portraits  |  Blue Wizards  |  Symbolism
• DAY 5:  Nazgúl  |  Typography  |  Firebeards  |  Foils
• DAY 6:  Hobbits  |  Motifs  |  Dunlendings  |  Subplots
• DAY 7:  Freeform  |  Colours abound  |  Unnamed characters  |  Alternate Universes

June challenge at tolkienshortfanworks posted

Here is the tolkienshortfanworks thematic prompt and formal challenge for June:



The thematic prompt is: cattle (or other domestic animals of similar kind like sheep or goats).



Cows are not particular prominent in Tolkien's Legendarium, but they clearly are being kept all over Middle-earth: in the Shire and beyond the Long Lake, in Rohan and in Gondor, for dairy or as draught animals. In the First Age, things are less clear, but there are scattered mentions in Tolkien's writings of cattle being kept by Men of the House of Beor and by the Sindar in Eastern Beleriand. (This last is in Nature of Middle-earth and has recently inspired some lovely art of Sindarin cowboys on Tumblr!)



And here is one famous example, from one of Bilbo's rhymes:



They also keep a hornéd cow

as proud as any queen;

But music turns her head like ale,

And makes her wave her tufted tail

and dance upon the green.



Here is an optional art prompt, from an English illuminated manuscript that shows a cow being milked while licking her calf.





The formal challenge is to write a bredlik poem.



If you have not heard about this, the original bredlik poem is this:

my name is Cow,

and wen its nite,

or wen the moon

is shiyning brite,

and all the men

haf gon to bed -

i stay up late.

i lik the bred.



It was apparently written in response to an incident on a re-enactment site, which is one of the reasons why the author adopted pseudo-archaic spelling.

If you can't imagine how to do the same kind of thing with a Legendarium setting, here is actuallyfeanor having a go at Silmarillion bredliks on AO3.





Although this month there is clearly a connection between the thematic prompt and the formal challenge, as always you can combine the thematic prompt and the formal challenge, but they can be filled entirely independently. You are also very welcome to combine your responses to either of them with other current challenges, such as the SWG Vintage challenge or Ekphrasis Week.

More details on the rules of the challenges (which are few) in the linked post at the community on Dreamwidth. 

New participants welcome!