Manwë's Mailbag

A shadow passes over the sun. There is the thunder of giant wings. And then …

A letter slowly spirals to the ground. It's Manwë's Eagles, delivering the mail to Middle-earth! The final challenge of the year will use postcards as prompts and can be done individually or collaboratively with other participants.

This challenge has two parts - making postcards which will be used as prompts, and using postcard prompts to create a fanwork.

PART 1 - MAKING POSTCARDS (starting Nov 1)
Design and submit a postcard—image and text. It can be from any character, in any time period. We only have three guidelines for you to keep in mind:

1. All images must either be your own work, images you have permission to use (ex: stock image you have rights to use, images licensed under Creative Commons, or similar), or images in the public domain (ex: Botticelli’s La Primavera, Abrecht Durer’s The Little Owl).

2. The text should be short enough to realistically fit on a standard sized postcard—A6 (~4x6"). It should also be either your own work or text in the public domain.

3. As we would like to be able to send them through the mail, please do not submit any images or text featuring explicit sex. (The USPS can refuse "matter that is otherwise mailable that has on its wrapper or envelope any indecent, lewd, lascivious, or obscene writing or printing". No one's going to arrest the mods if we drop a naughty card in the mailbox, but the card will probably end up in a postal inspector's office rather than with the intended recipient.)

The deadline to submit a postcard for use as a challenge prompt is December 1 — this gives us time to get at least the digital version of the card to the creators for Part 2 and to print/mail as needed. If you submit a postcard after December 1, you will still get the challenge stamp, but we may hold your postcard in reserve for the January amnesty.

To submit a card, send your design (image and text) to the mods via email, DM, or a comment on the DW post (comments will be screened by default.)

PART 2 - GET A POSTCARD PROMPT (starting Nov 15)

From Nov 15 on, you can sign up for a postcard prompt by messaging the mods in some form—email, on Dreamwidth, Tumblr, or on the Discord. It's that simple. Let us know if you want a digital-only card, or if you would like a card to be mailed. Please note that while you can sign up for multiple digital cards if you wish, we will only physically mail one card per person. Post what you create for your prompt by the end of the challenge for a stamp.

If you would like a card mailed to you: please request your card by December 1. This hopefully gives adequate time for the card to arrive before the end of the challenge. We'll give you the digital version immediately so you can start creating. The mods will need a mailing address for you. This will be used only to mail your postcard and will not be retained. Please do not put your address in a public message. (DW comments will be screened by default, and we will not publicly reply to Tumblr asks that include addresses.)

Digital-only cards may be requested right up until the January 15 challenge deadline.

This challenge opened in November 2022 .