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tolkienshortfanworks challenge for June

The June challenge for tolkienshortfanworks has been posted to the community on Dreamwidth. 

The thematic challenge for June is: write a piece influenced by another fandom or work.

This could be a straight cross-over but the prompt can be equally filled by any kind of fusion so that it can be entirely set in Arda or another Tolkien setting, if you prefer (compare the suggestions below).
In either case, the piece must have a significant amount of Tolkien influence as well to qualify for the community.
Three suggestions for inspiration:
1) Lady Macbeth in Middle-earth?
2) Penelope and her loom in Middle-earth?
3) Little Miss Muffet?
These all happen to be female characters from western lore, but obviously you are encouraged to go way outside those categories for inspiration!

The formal challenge is a fixed length of 333 words.

As always, these prompts can be filled separately and combined with other challenges.

New participants welcome!

For more details on the challenge see the linked entry.

Fellowship of the Fics: June Pride Month

June is truly a beautiful month that celebrates all sorts of love. What better way to show that off than with a bingo board?! Here you can find FOTFics' Pride Month bingo board that has a variety of sexualities, as well as some activities that are near and dear to LGBTQIA+ community!

Many of these can still be used in canon-verse! They don't necessarily have to be modern universe. Just have fun with them!

And of course don’t forget to send in your fics to us when you are done so we can put it in our queue using this form! Be creative!!

Gen Work June 2024

Gen Work June: A month to share fanworks in the gen relationship category (not the rating!)

Goal

There are some prompts below if you want to write or draw or something based on one of them (or not based on one of them). Or you can just share some of your old work you think deserves another go around at attention. Or make a rec list of your favourite gen works. Reblog your favourite art. Just leave a nice comment for someone to find, all of it counts here.

And if you want things reblogged here, tag @genworkjune, and there’s an AO3 collection with the same name if you want to use that.

Rules

The work has to be gen—that is, not focused on a romantic relationship. For the purposes of this event background romantic relationships are fine, as long as they aren’t the focus.

It would be appreciated if you could include major warnings, image descriptions, and stick very long posts at least partly under a read more, though there will be some slack allowed for older posts that are being reblogged. Also, if you’re reccing some art or fic by dropping a link in the inbox please at least include the website if not the whole link copied and pasted, rather than just a hyperlink under an “x”.

Prompts

(These are intended as a jumping off point only; you don’t have to use these and they can be interpreted as loosely as you want. You can fill one, you can fill multiple, you can use multiple in one work, we’re going for easy as you need it to be here)

• Character Study
• Self Discovery
• Mentor-Mentee Relationship
• Summer
• Outfits
• Twisting The Trope

Scribbles & Drabbles 2024

S&D is coming back for another year!

The schedule looks as follows this year:

Artists:
Sign-ups: June 1 - June 30
Art Submission Window: June 1 - July 13
Art posting begins: August 10

Authors:
Sign-ups: June 1 - July 31
Gallery revealed: July 27
Claims Day: August 3

• Authors who are also artists: 15:00 UTC
• Returning authors in good standing (no defaults last year of participation): 17:00 UTC
• New authors: 19:00 UTC
• Returning authors who've defaulted in the last year of participation: 21:00 UTC

Drop-out Deadline: October 25
Fic Submission Deadline: November 15
Reveals: November 29

Authors will be informed in advance about which group you belong to for claims. If you cannot claim in your assigned slot, you can use the form any time after, as it will remain open.

 

Please make sure to familiarise yourself with our guidelines and FAQs before signing up, even if you are a returning participant, as we have made some changes this year.

If you have any questions before then, or want to get an early start on the fun, come join the discord server!

Mythcon 53: Fantasies of the Middle Lands

Mythcon 53 will be held 2-5 August 2024 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with the theme "Fantasies of the Middle Lands." The author guest of honor is Eleanor Arnason, and the scholar guest of honor is Brian Attebery.

Mythcon 53 will be held at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The hotel has full conference and catering facilities, so nearly everything we need will be in one place. This hotel is in a bustling shopping area full of stores, restaurants, and a megaplex movie theater, all within walking distances. We will be able to hold our Welcome Reception sponsored by the Council of Stewards, as well as our Sunday evening banquet, in this same building.

Sleeping room rates for convention attendees have been set at $129* per night for a regular room, and $139* per night for a small suite. The suites are the same as the regular room except for a small sitting room at the front, and that they open onto the hotel atrium. To reserve rooms online at the special convention rate, go to this page. If you prefer not to use web access to reserve a room, you can call the hotel directly at +1 (952) 542-8600 and use the code MCA.

Mythcon 53 online registration for Mythopoeic Society members, general public, and students — prices are in US dollars. These are advance rates until July 1, 2024. In-person rates will go up significantly just before the conference and at the door.

• Full Conference Registration (MythSoc member) $75.00
• Full Conference Registration (non-member) $90.00
• Full Conference Registration (Student*) $65.00
• Virtual Attendance Only (via Zoom/Discord) $20.00

* Full-time students; must present current, active student ID at check-in to get this rate.

Teitho May/June Challenge: Joker

The time has come for a Joker Theme for May/June!

In a game of cards, you can use the Joker card to replace any other. Now you can pick ANY of our past challenges that stir your imagination and write a story or create art for it!

You can finally write that story you wanted to write for that challenge once but didn't have time for it, or never quite got polished to your satisfaction.

You could even write a story for some of the challenges that Teitho had before you knew about its existence! Or any of our recent ones!

We’d love to see your stories!

Please submit your stories before June 30, 2024, to teitho.contest@gmail.com.

Rules for the Teitho Contest can be found here.

Fellowship of the Fics: Modern AU May

You know what doesn't get enough love? Modern AUs! This event is a trope mash-up of sorts. You (or your followers) can combine an AU setting, character occupation, and dialogue prompt. You have all month to make as many different combinations as you want!

Prompts are available on Fellowship of the Fic's tumblr.

And, of course, don’t forget to send us your fics when you are done so we can put them in our queue using this form!! Happy writing!

Monstrous May 2024

Monstrous May was first established in 2021, and I've arranged prompts for each May since - for each day of the month of May, there is a prompt involving and invoking the monstrous.

Create art, sculpture, write fiction, poetry, make whatever you feel inspired to! Create for as many or as few days as inspire you, collaborate with friends, and have fun.

Fan creations are just as welcome as original ones, and naturally, erotic and adult creations are as well as SFW ones!

Prompts are available on Tumblr.

Have some questions? Here’s the FAQ from 2021 or ask on Tumblr.

May challenge at tolkienshortfanworks

The May challenge has been posted to the tolkienshortfanworks community on Dreamwidth. 
The thematic challenge for May is: name.
Tolkien has some interesting thoughts on naming.
Elves, depending on their background, can have mother names, father names and later given or adopted names, as well as adaptations of their names into other languages. Galadriel has all of these!
Dwarves, depending on the period, may have their own secret internal names and outward-facing names in Mannish languages.
Aragorn and Gandalf canonically both have multiple names, too.
The Quenya word for "name" is also the name of a Tengwa.
The Long List of the Ents has at its core a list of names.

The formal challenge is: acrostic.
This means that the first letters of your lines, sentences, paragraphs or sections should spell a word (or name!).
There is a selection of examples (prose and poetry) from the Tolkien fandom here on AO3.

Acrostics often spell out names or phrases containing names, but they can spell out any other word you like.
Also, as usual for these challenges, you can write about names or write an acrostic entirely independently of each other.
They can also be freely combined with prompts from other challenges, such as SWG's.

More details on the challenge at the linked entry.

New participants welcome!

 

May 2024 Calls for Papers

Oxonmoot 2024

Oxonmoot is an annual event hosted by The Tolkien Society which brings together over 500 Tolkien fans, scholars, students and Society members from across the world. Oxonmoot 2024 will be our 51st, and will be held over four days, from the afternoon of Thursday 29th August until the afternoon of Sunday 1st September, and will be held at St Anne’s College, Woodstock Road, Oxford and Online.

We are pleased to welcome contributions of all types to the programme for Oxonmoot 2024.

The Talks and Papers strand will run through the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday mornings. Papers may be presented in person in Oxford or online via Zoom.

The Call for Papers is now open! Presentations may be submitted here. Deadline to submit a talk or paper is midnight UK time on May 12th. (UPDATE: The deadline for online presentations has been extended to midnight June 12!)

The Talks and Papers will be balanced by a wide range of other Activities – these could include, but are not limited to, workshops, demonstrations, discussions, games, physical activities, films & videos and social activities – but any and all offers are most welcome. Activities may take place in Oxford, online, or combine both online and in person participation, and may be scheduled alongside the Talks & Papers, or in the Evening (local time) time depending on the nature of the Activity. You can submit a proposal for an activity here. Activities have a deadline of 8 am UK time on 1 August 2024.

Participants with questions may contact the Activities Programme Co-Ordinator, or for social activities the Social Programme Co-Ordinator.

See the Oxonmoot 2024 page for more information or to register!

Mythcon 53: Fantasies of the Middle Lands

The Mythopoeic Society’s annual conference, popularly called “Mythcon,” will be held in Minneapolis, Minnesota this year, from 2-5 August 2024. The idea of “middle-ness” can suggest stability—the center of an object is less likely to break than its edges. It can also suggest the opposite: something in a state of change can be said to be “in the middle”—neither one thing nor another. Mythcon 53, located in the middle of the continental U.S., welcomes papers exploring the concept of “middle-ness” as it is worked out in fantasy, science fiction, and related genres. Paper topics can cover a wide range of possibilities, including but not limited to the following:

• Locations: This could mean the implications of a place name including the word “middle,” such as Middle-earth or Midgard; places in our world that either shape or appear in fantasy such as the English Midlands or Middle America as in Stranger Things or American Gods; or even liminal places that appear in fantasy such as train stations, purgatory, or The Wood Between the Worlds.
• Characters: the middle child in a family (Arya Stark, Edmund Pevensie); adolescents negotiating that in-between space (Luce in The Owl House; Ged in Earthsea); individuals or people groups who are a mix of others (Tolkien’s Númenóreans; Percy Jackson).
• Textual middle-ness: intertextuality, genre-crossing, multiple media, even the middle books/movies of a trilogy (The Empire Strikes Back, The Two Towers).
• Authors: considering the location of the con, Midwestern authors and scholars such as Tim O’Brian, Jack Zipes, Lois McMaster Bujold, or Philip Jose Farmer.

We also welcome papers on the work of either of our Guests of Honor, Brian Attebery and Eleanor Arnason. Because this conference is happening in conjunction with Diversicon, a multicultural, multimedia event dedicated to improving contacts among groups and individuals interested in speculative fiction, we are also interested in papers on their traditional Posthumous Guest, who this year is L. Frank Baum. And, as always, we welcome papers focusing on the work and interests of the Inklings (especially J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams), and other fantasy authors and themes. Papers from a variety of critical perspectives and disciplines are welcome.

Each paper will be given a one-hour slot to allow time for questions, but individual papers should be timed for oral presentation in 40 minutes maximum. Panels are also welcome, and both papers and panels may be presented virtually or in person. Paper abstracts of no more than 300 words, along with contact information, should be sent to the Papers Coordinator at papers@mythcon.org by May 15, 2024. Please include your A/V requirements and the projected time needed for your presentation. If your programming interests are more in line with Diversicon’s focus (see http://www.diversicon.org/), then please send your proposal to scottl2605@aol.com.

Additional Links:
Mythcon 53 Conference Page
Mythcon 53 Registration

German Tolkien Society Seminar: Tolkien and His Editors

Tolkien, in paratextual parts of his main work The Lord of the Rings, introduced himself as the editor and translator of the Red Book of Westmarch. A similar conjecture can be found in Farmer Giles of Ham, which comes with a scholarly preface and purports to be the translation of a medieval manuscript. These rather playful examples should be set alongside the real-world editors of Tolkien’s works. In his will, Tolkien made his youngest son Christopher (1924-2020) his ‘literary executor’ with “full power to publish edit alter rewrite or complete any work of mine which may be unpublished at my death or to destroy the whole or any part or parts of any such unpublished works as he in his absolute discretion may think fit and subject thereto” (official copy of Tolkien’s will, 23 July, 1973). Until his death (16 January 2020), Christopher actively fulfilled his role as ‘literary executor’ and edited and made available to a wide audience countless texts from Tolkien’s estate – and thus strongly influenced the perception and understanding of the works already published during Tolkien’s lifetime. Above all, The Silmarillion (1977), which he edited and, as was established in retrospect (Kane 2009), was heavily modified by him, had a major influence on Tolkien research.

In addition to the central figure of Christopher Tolkien, who could have celebrated his 100th birthday in 2024, the roles of the editors Stanley and Rayner Unwin, the biographer Humphrey Carpenter (Biography; Letters), the student and later colleague Alan Bliss (Hengest and Finn), the daughter-in-law Baillie Tolkien (The Father Christmas Letters) or the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship should also be examined.

The aim of this seminar is to bring together researchers from different disciplines to explore the various questions and problems posed by the publication of Tolkien’s work.

Possible starting points for presentations would be:

• Christopher Tolkien (1924-2020) as ‘co-author’ of Tolkien’s work
• Censorship and restriction: the search for the ‘true’ Tolkien biography
• Tolkien’s posthumous academic work
• The publication of the works on the Elvish (and other) languages
• Access to and handling of Tolkien’s manuscripts and notes in the Bodleian and the Marquette

The 20th Seminar of the German Tolkien Society is supported by Walking Tree Publishers and will take place in a hybrid format at the RWTH Aachen from 11-13 October 2024. 

Interested applicants are requested to send a short synopsis (no longer than one page) and a short biography as well as their preference (attendance in person or online presentation) to Thomas Fornet-Ponse by 31 May 2024: hither-shore@tolkiengesellschaft.de

See the full call for papers here.

Journal of Tolkien Research Special Issue: Asexuality and Aromanticism in Tolkien’s Legendarium

Queer scholarship in Tolkien studies has made great strides in recent years, from David Craig’s “‘Queer Lodgings’: Gender and Sexuality in ‘The Lord of the Rings’” (2001) to Jane Chance’s Tolkien, Self and Other (2016) and Christopher Vaccaro and Yvette Kisor’s Tolkien and Alterity (2017). At a critical juncture of growth, this sub-field is poised to evaluate and address any gaps that exist as the field moves forward. One such gap, in both Tolkien studies and queer studies, is asexuality and aromanticism, which, while part of the LGBTQIA+ umbrella, are significantly underrepresented in scholarship and interpretation.

Asexuality, defined broadly as not experiencing sexual attraction to other people, and aromanticism, not experiencing romantic attraction to other people, convey a spectrum of individual experiences (ace-spectrum, or aspec). Aspec perspectives not only represent these individual identities and experiences but also illuminate and refresh understandings of love, desire, relationships, communities, and culture. Implemented within literary interpretation, an aspec lens offers insights into characters, plots, themes, narrative structures, and much more.

In order to address a gap in queer scholarship in Tolkien studies and to solicit new perspectives that can deepen understandings of Tolkien’s work, we invite submissions for a proposed special issue in Journal of Tolkien Research that focuses on asexuality and aromanticism in Tolkien’s work.

Topics can include but are not limited to:

• Aspec readings of individual characters
• Interpretations of love/relationships beyond (but not necessarily excluding) romantic, sexual, and/or platonic love
• Intersections between aspec theory and gender, disability, race, or other critical theory
• Comparative readings between Tolkien’s work and other fiction
• Amatonormativity or aspec aspects in Tolkien’s work, life, and historical context
• Reception of Tolkien’s work by aspec readers
• Aspec interpretations within adaptations of Tolkien’s work
• Interpretations focused on specific identities within the ace-spectrum, including demi-
• sexual/romantic, grey-sexual/romantic, etc.

Proposals/abstracts of a maximum of 300 words, along with a short bio and working bibliography (not included in word count), should be sent via email to aspectolkien@gmail.com no later than midnight Eastern Time on August 31, 2024.

Signum University Regional Moots

These small, regional conferences are held at various dates and locations. See the Regional Moots page for more details.

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Many thanks to Robin Anne Reid and her Online Conference Project for handily compiling this information on a regular basis!