Around the World and Web

Around the World and Web includes announcements and items of interest from beyond the SWG.

Week of Kiliel

Welcome to Week of Kiliel! 

This event will be held May 17-23! The goal of this week is to celebrate and be creatively inspired by the relationship between Tauriel and Kili Durin! We want to encourage The Hobbit community to make Kiliel art, fanfiction, edits, crafts, and more!

Rules:

• There are prompts for every day to inspire your creativity! You can pick one or multiple from each day, and they can be followed as loosely or as closely as you would like!

• Please use the tag “#week of kiliel” so we can reblog your entries! You can also tag @weekofkiliel! We are so excited to see and support all of your work!

• Late entries are fine, though we ask that you do not post earlier!

• If you have an existing work that fits one of these prompts that you would like to submit, that is fine, but please repost about it with the hashtag on the day it corresponds to! While we accept already existing works, we really want to encourage new Kiliel content as that is one of the goals of Kiliel week!

• NSFW is allowed! While none of the prompts are explicitly NSFW, NSFW is permitted as long as it is properly tagged!

• While the main ship and characters should be Kiliel, background ships and characters are welcome! However, for this event we do not accept Durincest or other incest ships.

NO AI WILL BE PERMITTED FOR THIS EVENT, ANY AI ENTRIES WILL BE UNOFFICIAL AND WILL NOT BE REBLOGGED OR ENDORSED

Prompts

Day 1 - Modern AU, First Kiss, Dating, Fluff

Day 2 - Courting, Erebor Never Fell AU, Wingman, Khuzdul

Day 3 - Sickfic, Poison, Angst, Healing

Day 4 - Mirkwood, Culture Shock, Meetcute, Sindarin

Day 5 - Height Difference, Cuddling, College AU, Bed Sharing

Day 6 - Crossover AU, Fake Dating, Arranged Marriage, Confession

Day 7 - Afterlife, Everybody Lives, Scene Rewrite, Alt First Meeting

Aspec Arda Week 2026

Aspec Arda Week: May 10th-16th, 2026

This event celebrates asexual and aromantic spectrum interpretations and headcanons of Tolkien's Legendarium.

Any creations about the aromantic and asexual spectrums are welcome! You can create edits, gifs, fanart, fanfic, fanmixes, and more! All versions of canon/fanon and characters are included, be it from the books, movies, TV, OCs, etc. Please tag your posts with #aspecardaweek AND @ mention this blog @aspecardaweek so that your work can be easily found. If you are posting your submission to AO3, we will have an event collection! This is not an event for generative AI works.

The prompts below are a guideline for the week’s events, though you are not obligated to stick to them when participating. They’re completely optional, and more of a source of inspiration than a mandatory guideline. Feel free to explore them however you’d like; an explanation for each is given, but you can interpret them differently if you want to.

Day 1 / May 10th: Asexuality || Hope 

Day 2 / May 11th: Aromanticism || Community 

Day 3 / May 12th: Across the A-Spectrum || Loneliness 

Day 4 / May 13th: Worldbuilding || Dragons 

Day 5 / May 14th: Relationships || Linguistics 

Day 6 / May 15th: Intersectionality || Found Family 

Day 7 / May 16th: Freeform

For further clarification, check out our FAQcode of conduct, and prompts pages! Happy creating!!

Detailed Prompts

DAY ONE: Asexuality

What characters do you see as asexual? Why? How does that impact their lives?

Alternative prompt: Hope

DAY TWO: Aromanticism

What characters do you see as aromantic? Why? How does that impact their lives?

Alternative prompt: Community

DAY THREE: Across the A-Spectrum

“Asexual” and “aromantic” are umbrella terms encapsulating a wide spectrum of identities. From grayromantic to demisexual, and aroace to lithromantic —there are many other labels on the a-spectrum. This is a day for exploring those identities and the characters you associate them with.

Alternative prompt: Loneliness

DAY FOUR: World Building

How does acceptance and prevalence of aspec identity vary over both cultures and species?

Are all elves really baseline demisexual? What’s up with one third of dwarven populations focusing on their craft instead of taking a spouse? How do soul bonds work between elven couples who don’t want to have sex? Did Númenor get aphobic when they started distancing themselves from the Elves? Do aspec hobbits feel pressure to settle down and have large families?

Alternative prompt: Dragons

DAY FIVE: Relationships

Aspec people can have many different kinds of relationships, including romantic and sexual ones— but some kinds of relationships are more unique and common to the aspec communities, such as queerplatonic ones. Today is a day for exploring all these different kinds of relationships!

There are several relationships in Tolkien's works that could easily be read as queerplatonic, including Frodo & Sam, and Legolas & Gimli. There is also an interesting footnote in The Nature of Middle Earth which describes something like a queerplatonic relationship and provides some Quenya words for it.

Alternative prompt: Linguistics - Many of the terms for aspec identity come from root words of Latin, can you postulate translations for aspec terminology in any of Tolkien's languages?

DAY SIX: Intersectionality

There is more to a person’s life than just their orientation. Outside of fantasy species, how does being aspec interact with a character’s other identities and experiences, such as race or disability or religion? What’s the impact of a character’s aspec identity on their gender or other orientation labels? Today is a day for exploring the intersections of the aspec experience with other aspects of identity.

Alternative Prompt: Found Family

DAY SEVEN: Freeform

Post about something aspec related not yet covered in the topics this week, or return to a prompt you have more thoughts about! Alternatively, we have some additional prompts for inspiration that did not quite fit into the other days.

  • Recommend a fic, meta post, etc. that includes aspec identity.
  • How would a particular character respond to allonormativity / amatanormativity? What kind of amatanormativity / allonormativity have they faced?
  • What is a particular character’s relationship with their aspec identity Is it a big part of their life?
  • Post about an aspec character’s family, either found family, or blood relations. Does their family support them? Does their family (or society) have expectations of marriage and children of them?
  • Post about aspec community (symbols, cultural practices, mentorship and friendship with other aspec characters) within the context a culture within Tolkien's Legendarium, or take a character and post about what parts an aspec community they would resonate with in a modern Earth AU.

 

Angbang Week 2026

This is the official blog of Angbang (or Melron) week. 

We follow the tags "#AngbangWeek" and "#Angbang Week" as well as the current year variations of those tags. We have our ask box and DMs open if you have any questions!

List of prompts for Angbang Week 2026:

  • Day 1: First meeting/Reunion
  • Day 2: Dating/Intimacy
  • Day 3: Competitions/Rivalry
  • Day 4: Eyes/Gaze
  • Day 5: Letters/Long distance communication
  • Day 6: Last day together/Separation
  • Day 7: Canon divergence

As always, there are two prompts a day to choose between. You may create any original work you feel relates to the prompt, and if you did not connect with a prompt, feel free to skip it. All previously unposted creations made by you are accepted (fic, art, moodboards, playlists, etc). For any adult content, please keep it below a read more and tag it accordingly.

When posting your works, please post them on the day the prompt appears on or on a later day and tag this blog directly by using @, or add one of the following tags (#angbangweek2026, #angbang week 2026) to your post's tag list so we know the post is for the event. Please note that the event rules have been updated to clarify that we do NOT accept any creations made using Generative AI of any sort, and as such we will not be featuring any such content on this blog. For any questions or further clarifications, feel free to reach out in the asks or DMs. Happy creating and we'll see you in May!

April/May Teitho Challenge

Our prompt for April/May is Heartbreak. There are so many possibilities with this one!

Will you go back to the very beginning with the heartbreak of Melkor’s discord during the creation?

Or will you take us to the time of Miriel and Finwë? Fëanor’s heartbreak at the loss of his mother?And later his father’s death? Or the loss of the Silmarils themselves, that led to so much heartbreak for so many?

The kinslaying. The ship burning. The Helcaraxë. Battle after battle. Betrayal. The heartbreak of The Oath itself.

The death of Fingolfin. Fingon. Finrod. The sons of Fëanor, one after another. The heartbreak of those left behind: Maglor, Galadriel, Elrond.

The tragedy of the House of Hurin.

Or will you come to the time of Celebrimbor—the glory of Eregion and Khazad-Dûm and the devastation that followed? The Last Alliance?

The travails of Frodo. The lonely travels of Aragorn. The heavy weight of duty straining the hearts of both Boromir and Faramir. Eowyn’s heartbreak in Edoras.

The doomed love stories that are woven into Tolkien’s books—Turin, Finduilas, Gwindor, to name a few.

Heartbreak can be so many things—with love, with loss, with changes that shift our entire world. But heartbreak can also be in the small moments—for a child, a parent, a friend, a comrade. It can be momentary or span years. Or even lifetimes.

Will you break our hearts with your stories and art this time? Or will you find a way to heal the heartbreak and find the hope that can endure and persist?

We can’t wait to see what you do with this prompt!

Submissions are due May 31, 2026. Please send them to teitho.contest@gmail.com

Your teitho mods

Sian22, Lotrfan, and Cassie.

Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang 2026

Schedule 

  • March

    1: 2025 Gallery Opens

    The Gallery for 2025 is live! Enjoy the beautiful pieces created for last year’s TRSB!

    22: Suggestion Form Opens

    This form gives potential authors (or anyone else who wants to play!) the opportunity to suggest characters, places and scenarios they would like to see in the submitted art. We will post a link to the form on our Tumblr and here on the website. The answers will feed into a publicly available spreadsheet listing the ideas submitted; artists can peruse this to get inspired!

  • April

    12: Sign-ups Open

    We post links to our sign-up form on all the usual platforms. You can then sign up as an artist, an author, a beta, a cheerleader, a pinch hitter, or as two or more of these. Please see the ‘Sign-ups’ section of the FAQ for more details on what these terms mean.

  • May

    3: Artist Sign-up Deadline

    9: Art Draft Due

    Participating art submissions must be sent to the mods by this date to be eligible for the Claims Gallery. 
    For more details on how to do this, see the ‘Art Submissions’ section of the FAQ. Artists may submit up to two pieces of art, for claiming by two separate authors.

    10: Discord Server Opens

    Come hang out with your fellow participants!

    15: Art Previews Open

    Our online gallery of art prompts will be visible to signed-up participants only.  Signed-up authors can browse the artworks and see which pieces appeal to their muses!

    16-17: Discord Art Talks

    These are live chats on Discord with mod presence – start times to be announced – where we go through the beautiful gallery and admire the work of our artists. It has been great fun in past years!

    20: Author Signups Deadline

    23 (Saturday) 17:00 UTC: CLAIMS

    Authors submit a ranked list of the artworks they would like to claim to write fic for. Claims are on a first-come, first-served basis. One artwork will be allocated to each claiming author; the mods will email you to confirm which piece you have successfully claimed and how to get in touch with your artist. See the ‘Claims’ section of the FAQ for more information.

    What time is that for me?

    TBA – Additional Claims

    If any artworks are left unclaimed, we will hold one or more additional claiming rounds as needed. Generally, there will be 24 hours between rounds, but the timing is at the mods’ discretion. The additional round(s) will be announced to signed-up participants by email and on the TRSB Discord.

    31: Post-Claims Check-in

    The mods will email each artist/author pair to ensure that you have successfully established contact – even if you are not planning on a close collaboration, it is polite to check in with your partner, say hello, and make sure you’re both clear on must-haves and do-not-wants. One person from your pair must respond and confirm that you have done this!

  • June

    14: Free Rein Art Due

    We know some artists like to give their authors as much creative freedom as possible, and we have a dedicated collaboration option for this (see ‘Art Submissions’ FAQs). However, this means we require these artists to share the final art with their authors much earlier than artists who are prepared to be more involved.

  • July

    12: Check-in #2

    The mods will email each pair to ensure everything is on track. One person from your pair must respond – see ‘Check Ins’ in the FAQ.

  • August

    9: Final Art Due

    Artists must share the final art with their authors – but don’t post it yet!
    Don’t email it to the mods.

    16: Final Check-in (#3)

    Deadline to abandon your fic to a pinch hitter. There will be no penalty for dropping out on or before this date. This year we ask both collaborators to contact the mods at the final check-in.

    The mods will email all participants beforehand to ensure everything is still on track. We will ask you to confirm:

    • Whether the art is complete (Artists: did you share it with your author? Authors: have you seen the final art?)
    • Whether you have discussed posting logistics (ie, have you talked about how the art will be posted (embedded and/or posted separately to the collection), who will handle promo posting, any specific posting needs)

    26: Art Can Be Posted

    Artworks can be posted to your preferred platform on or after this date (but before they are due in the collection).  Hype your collab wherever you like and get the excitement going! Artists should ensure that their author has received a link to the art for embedding or linking in the finished fic as agreed upon before August 30th (deadline for posting the fic to the collection).

    30: Fic Due In Collection

    Authors should post their stories in our AO3 collection with the artwork embedded or linked. See the “Posting fic” section of our FAQ.

  • September

    5: COLLECTION REVEALS


Around the World and Web Archive

Events listed here are no longer active but are listed on the site for historical purposes.

German Tolkien Society Annual Seminar: Tolkien and Politics

This year our Tolkien Seminar will take place from 29th - 31st October at the University of Marbug. The topic is "Tolkien and Politics". Due to the current situation, the seminar will take place for the first time in hybrid form with the possibility to participate on site and online. If you would like to attend on site, please register here. Registration is free!

Call for Papers: Popular Culture Association Conference Tolkien Studies Area

This year's Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association (PCA/ACA) Conference will be held in Seattle, April 13-16, 2022. Paper proposals are being accepted through November 15, 2020. Note that PCA/ACA offers a dedicated Tolkien Studies area!

The Tolkien Studies Area (TSA) welcomes proposals for individual papers, paper sessions (with four proposals), and roundtables (with five-seven participants) in any area of Tolkien studies. All PCA sessions are scheduled in 1.5-hour slots. Individual presenters should plan for fifteen minutes to present, and roundtable participants should plan for 5-7 minutes each.

We welcome scholars in all period specializations, from any disciplinary perspective, including interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary, and using any critical theory. Tolkien studies includes but is not limited to: the Legendarium, adaptations and transformative works, reader reception and fan studies, source studies, literary studies, critical race studies, cultural studies, tourism studies, medieval and medievalist studies, media and marketing, religious studies.

Academics, independent scholars, and graduate students are invited to submit through the online submission page. At this time, we are not accepting proposals from undergraduate students.

The Tolkien Studies area page has more information on how to submit a proposal.

Comfortween Prompts Open

There will not be new prompts this year as mods have been busy, but we would like to repost last year's if anyone would like to use them this year! There is a Ao3 Collection for posting to! This is a casual thing, do as many or as few as you would like. Post them out of order! Put your own spin on them! This is just for fun. You can find the Comfortween prompts here.

Tolkien Society Autumn Seminar: Translating and Illustrating Tolkien Registration Open

Tolkien’s appeal has led to his fiction and non-fiction being translated into over fifty languages. The art of translation is immensely complex and when discussing the Dutch translation of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien himself saw the task as “formidable”, offering his own supportive intervention to achieve a satisfactory result. The author’s invented names and languages prompt the question of how the translator should approach Tolkien’s immense mythology. Recent scholarship has emphasised the need for a wider range of Tolkien’s work to be translated in order for readers to gain a fuller understanding of Arda and the author’s development. But with a wealth of translated texts existing already, this seminar hopes to spark new interpretations about old texts and for unacknowledged translations to be brought to light and examined.

An illustrator of his own work, Tolkien had a keen eye for the visual representation of a text. He admired the work of illustrators such as Pauline Baynes, Cor Blok and Ingahild Grathmer (the Queen of Denmark) and others who illustrated the original English and translated versions of his texts. The manner in which illustrators have engaged with Tolkien’s stories varies dramatically and can often be influenced by culturally specific ideas. This seminar hopes to re-examine renowned illustrations of Tolkien’s work while calling for new or overshadowed illustrations to be discussed.

Registration is free for this online seminar, which will be held on 6 November 2021.

Teitho Contest September/October Challenge: Fruit

The Teitho challenge for September and October is Fruit.

How will you choose to approach this month’s prompt? Summer’s bounty in the Shire? A harvest meal with Tom Bombadil and Goldberry?

Or does your story follow the fruit of the vines and the vintages of Old Dorwinion that make their way to cellars in Middle-earth?

Or will you take us all the way back to Valinor, to the fruit of the Two Trees. Or perhaps Isildur’s brave action of stealing a fruit from Nimloth the Fair, the White Tree of Numenor.

Fruit can have other connotations as well: the fruit of one’s labours, an idea or concept coming to fruition, the satisfaction of a fruitful life.

Whatever path you choose we wish you fruitful endeavors with this month’s story!

Remember submissions are due by October 31. Please email them to teitho.contest@gmail.com.

LOTRO Coupon Code for Free Quest Packs

Get caught up just in time for the upcoming Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) Fate of Gundabad Expansion with a special coupon Code that will let you acquire all currently-available quest packs permanently on your account(s)! However, you will need to act quickly, as this Coupon Code is available to redeem through November 30th, 2021.

The coupon code and a list of quest packs included is available on the LOTRO site.

Finwëan Ladies Week

This is a week-long event on Tumblr celebrating the ladies of the line of Finwë! There have been events within the Silmarillion fandom focused on the sons of Finwë and their descendants, and to add to the fun this week was established to give his wives, daughters, and other female descendants their own time to shine. We are back for our third year, from October 4-10, 2021!

Any content and creations about the ladies of Finwë’s line are welcome! You can create edits, gifs, fanart, fanfic, fanmixes, and more! Please tag your posts with #finweanladiesweek AND @ mention this blog @finweanladiesweek 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 a detailed explanation for each one.

DAY ONE: Míriel Þerindë and Indis
DAY TWO: Findis and Írimë Lalwen
DAY THREE: Aredhel and Galadrield
DAY FOUR: Later Generations
DAY FIVE: Ladies Who Married In
DAY SIX: Original Characters
DAY SEVEN: Freeform

October Challenge at tolkienshortfanworks

The October Challenge at the tolkienshortfanworks community on Dreamwidth has been posted. (New members are very welcome to join the community.)

The thematic prompt is Apple.

The formal challenge is to write a piece in blank verse. either unrhymed iambic pentameter (the most common kind of blank verse in English) or other similar unrhymed metre.

(For  bonus quotation prompts and more details on the challenges, see the linked Dreamwidth post.)

Fall for Tolkien: Scribbles & Drabbles

Scribbles & Drabbles (Fall For Tolkien):

An autumn exchange pairing artist with writers, with lower minimum requirements.

Artist Sign-ups end on September 25th

What counts as art? If you say it's art, it's art. Digital art. Drawings. Paintings. Music. Playlists. Mood boards. Animations. Toilet paper tube Elves. Cosplay. Your pet in cosplay. Photos. Crafts. Calligraphy. Maps. Food. Finger-painting. Sculpture. Paper Bag Puppets. I could keep going, but you get the idea. As the name 'scribbles' implies, you can submit your piece as 'unfinished' -- just think of how much Unfinished Tales has inspired people to create content.

Author & Beta Sign-ups are now open! Author sign-up end October 3rd.

What's the minimum word count? 100 words. As the name 'drabbles' refers to, your submissions need only be 100 words minimum to count. You can write a drabble, a scene, a character study, a dialogue exchange, a headcanon, a poem--you get the idea. And like the art, your piece is as 'finished' as you feel like it needs to be.

There is a website on Weebly (linked),  an AO3 collection, and a Discord.

More details and the schedule at the linked website.

Half-Elven Week starting on Tumblr on 13 September

Half-Elven Week will run 13 to 19 September on Tumblr, a week to appreciate Tolkien’s half-elven characters (characters who have the blood of elves and some other race, no matter if they are called so in the canon).

Characters and themes as prompts by day of the week:

Day 1 - Being Different; Doriathrim - Lúthien, Dior, Eluréd, Elurín, Elwing

Day 2 - The Choice; People of Sirion - Elwing, Eärendil, Elrond, Elros

Day 3 - Heritage; Númenoreans - Elros, his children and descendants

Day 4 - Power; People of Rivendell - Elrond, his children and descendants

Day 5 - Legacy; Princes of Dol Amroth - Galador, Gilmith and their descendants

Day 6 - Loss; Parents of half-elves - Melian, Thingol, Tuor, Idril, Beren, Nimloth, Celebrían, Elros’s wife, Imrazôr, Mithrellas, and others

Day 7 - Freeform

 

prompts aren’t mandatory, only a source of inspiration. 

all kinds of content are allowed - art, fanfiction, headcanons, meta, character analysis, moodboards, fancast, aesthetic, etc.

- OCs are welcome - children of Caranthir/Haleth, Aegnor/Andreth, any elf/other race pair

- book-related content is preferred, but movie content is still welcome

 

More details at the linked post.