Holiday Feast

As the year draws to an end and the days in the northern hemisphere grow ever shorter, many communities come together to celebrate the turn of years, chat, sing, play and (most importantly!) enjoy good food. In the spirit of the festive season, whatever holidays or holy days you observe--or even if you choose not to celebrate anything at this time of the year--the SWG would like to invite you to a splendid five-course banquet.

But as everybody has different preferences for their dishes and a digital meal just isn't the same thing as a real-world feast anyway, our banquet is taking the shape of prompt sets instead. For every "course" of our feast, we're offering you a choice of five prompts--writing, reading, commenting, artwork or meta. You can take as many as your appetite (and your time during this busy season) allows. Feel free just to sample one or two prompts, or to stuff yourself to your heart's delight! It's up to you how to use the prompts. You can include several in one fanwork, or create separate pieces for each of them. You don’t have to stick to a single type of prompt, either. If you wish to create fanart for one “course”, comment for another, and write meta for a third, that’s absolutely fine!

• Writing responses include fiction and poetry. Writing responses must be posted to the archive in order to receive a stamp.
• Artwork includes, for the sake of simplicity, all sorts of fannish creativity that isn’t writing - traditional or digital art, but also costume design, video editing, gifsets, playlists or whatever else tickles your fancy. In order to receive a stamp, artwork should be posted to either our Dreamwidth, our LiveJournal community, or on Tumblr tagging us @silmarillionwritersguild and using the tag #swg holiday feast. We also accept submissions on our Tumblr.
• Reading simply requires you to read a chapter of Tolkien that fits the prompt. The chapter can be from any of Tolkien's works, not just those connected to The Silmarillion or even Middle-earth. Please comment on our Dreamwith or LiveJournal, send us an ask, or email us to let us know about the prompt you completed so that we can award you your stamp. We encourage you to comment once at the end of the challenge with all of the stamps you need.
• Commenting requires commenting on a Silmarillion-based fanwork. The comment does not have to be given on the SWG. Please let us now the prompt you completed by commenting on our Dreamwith or LiveJournal, sending us an ask, or emailing us so that we can award you your stamp. We encourage you to comment once at the end of the challenge with all of the stamps you need.
• Meta includes - but is not limited to - formal analysis, criticism, interpretation, bibliography/link lists, but also headcanons, mind mapping, and other less formal works of nonfiction. Meta responses must be posted to the archive in order to receive a stamp.

Note that your responses don't have to be about holidays, celebrations or feasting, unless this is specified in the prompt!

This challenge opened in November 2018 .

Prompts

Choose your prompt from the collection below.

View Prompts

Holiday Feast Text-Only Prompt Menu

November-December 2018 Holiday Feast Challenge: Text-Only Prompt Menu

Jump to Starters | Fish Course | Main Course | Dessert | Cheese Course.

Starters

Writing: Choose a favorite novel off your bookshelf or--if you're feeling brave--a novel at random. The first sentence is your prompt. You don’t have to use the first line as the first line of your response - in fact, you don’t even have to use it in your story at all, unless what’s you want to do (in which case you’re welcome to change place or personal names if necessary). Other than that, you could use the mood it invokes in you for inspiration. Or use the theme of that first line, or the whole novel, in your story.

Reading: For our starter course, we would like to send you on a little scavenger hunt in the Legendarium. The following lines all stand at the beginning of a chapter… but what chapter in what book? Happy searching! (In order to receive a stamp for this challenge, you need to read at least one of the chapters, although we encourage you to dive back into your Tolkien books to at least locate them all.)

• There was a cold wind blowing off the North Star when they got near the world’s edge, and the chilly spray of the waterfalls splashed over them.
• In that time were made those things that afterwards were most renowned of all the works of the Elves.
• ’Well, master, we’re in a fix and no mistake,’ said Sam Gamgee.
• In the South from sleep | to swift fury / a storm was stirred, | striding northward / over leagues of water | loud with thunder / and roaring rain | it rushed onward.
• Ægidius de Hammo was a man who lived in the midmost parts of the Island of Britain.
• It is said that Beren and Lúthien returned to the northern lands of Middle-earth, and dwelt together for a time as living man and woman; and they took up again their mortal form in Doriath.
• In the days of the Dark Kings, when a man could still walk dry-shod from the Rising of the Sun to the Sea of its setting, there lived in the fenced town of his people in the green hills of Agar an old man, by name Hazad Longbeard.

Commenting: Comment on a fanwork (or several, of course!) that deals with a beginning in some form or another. It could be about the first step of a journey, a character’s first meeting with another character, the building of a city … or anything else that you feel stands at the start of something.

Artwork: Illustrate a beginning … of a relationship, journey, dramatic development, place, or whatever else comes to your mind.

Meta: Write a piece of meta about a beginning! Whether playful headcanon about the first meeting of your OTP or a ten-page analysis on “Of the Beginning of Days”, if it’s nonfiction about the start of something, it fits. OR use any of the opening lines from the Reading challenge to inspire a piece of meta about the Legendarium.

Fish Course

For the fish course, we invite you to take a closer look at the maritime themes, locations and characters of the Legendarium. You could, for example, write fanfic about Círdan, read up on Númenor, comment on a fanwork (fic or otherwise) about Ulmo, create fanart of Voronwë’s shipwreck, or write meta about Telerin shanties! The possibilities are as boundless as the sea - though you are welcome to extend this challenge to rivers, lakes and other bodies of water.

Here are some keywords to get your muses swimming:

• Cuiviénen
• Alqualondë
• Eglarest
• Brithombar
• Sea-longing
• Mouths of Sirion
• Númenor
• Elwing and Eärendil (and their companions)
• Círdan
• Tol Eressëa
• Ulmo, Uinen and Ossë
• Nenya
• Mithlond
• Nimrodel
• Aldarion
• The Guild of Venturers
• Swans and other waterfowl
• Himling
• Lake Helevorn
• Lake Mithrim
• Ossiriand
• Kheled-zâram

Naturally, this list isn’t comprehensive, so if you’ve got a different idea in mind, feel free to use that!

Main Course

Writing: For the main course, we would like you to tackle themes or scenes that are central to the Legendarium. You’ll find a list of suggestions below, but you’re just as welcome to pick a theme that we didn’t list - as long as you feel it’s at the heart of Tolkien’s work.

Reading: For the main course, select and read a chapter that connects strongly to one of the themes below.

Commenting: Comment on a fanwork (or several, of course!) dealing with one of the themes below.

Artwork: Create artwork for a pivotal scene! Choose a scene that embodies one of the themes listed below or illustrate a fanwork that is connected to one of these themes.

Meta: Write a piece of meta about one of the central themes listed below.

• the Fall
• greed
• estel
• subcreation
• rebellion
• courage
• wisdom
• immortality
• preservation vs. change
• light vs. dark
• power
• beauty
• fate vs. free will
• discovery
• faith vs. doubt
• friendship
• heroism
• knowledge
• freedom
• love
• loyalty
• nature
• words and names
• rebirth and renewal
• sacrifice
• invention
• temptation
• war vs. peace

Dessert

Writing: Create a sweet treat for someone else by writing a story or poem as a gift. For example, you might want to write a story for your favorite artist based off a work of art, create a thank-you story about your beta's favorite character, write a missing scene for a frequent commenter, or create a story you know a friend would love to read.

Reading: Read a chapter that includes sweet foods and fragrances. The list below will help you to find something.

• Athelas (The Return of the King, "The Houses of Healing")
• Aeglos (The Children of Húrin, "Of Mîm the Dwarf")
• Míruvor (The Fellowship of the Ring, “Three is Company” OR “Lothlórien”)
• Fragrant Trees of Nísimaldar (Unfinished Tales, "A Description of the Island of Númenor")
• Lembas (Peoples of Middle-earth, "Of Lembas")
• Honey (The Hobbit, "Queer Lodgings")
• Strawberries and plums(The Return of the King, "The Grey Havens")
• Smith of Wootton Major
• Ripe fruit (Yavanna) and fragrant flowers (Vána) (The Silmarillion, “Valaquenta”)
• The high feast (The Silmarillion, “Of the Darkening of Valinor”)
• Limpë (The Book of Lost Tales, “The Chaining of Melko”)
• Nost-na-Lothion (Fall of Gondolin, "The Tale of the Fall of Gondolin")

Commenting: Comment on something “short and sweet” that is less than 1000 words.

Artwork: Create a sweet treat for someone else, such as an artwork for their fic, a sketch of a friend's favourite character, or a frequent commenter's favorite scene from canon.

Meta: What do Elves (or Dwarves, Hobbits … or even Orcs!) have for dessert, anyway? For this course, we’d like to challenge you to study the sweet side of Middle-earth meals. Your response can be as scholarly or as light-hearted as you want, and you can use whatever sources you feel are useful. Some ideas for inspiration:

• historical recipes
• the fruits mentioned in the Legendarium
• Beorn’s diet of honey and cream
• the history of lembas and/or cram
• speculations about food served at the various canonical feasts and holidays
• conditions in Arda required to grow essential dessert ingredients

Cheese Course

Writing: In writing, we are generally encouraged to avoid cheesy scenes and corny clichés. But for this course, we’d like to encourage you to indulge in the cheesiest, cliché-heaviest purple prose possible. It can make up part of your response - maybe someone is writing a love letter or reading a tear jerker romance? - or the whole fic can be as cheesy and corny as our cold wintery hearts desire!

Reading: Yes, we're going to say it. The tale of Beren and Lúthien is lovely, but it’s also the easily the cheesiest story in the Legendarium, especially the verse version in The Lays of Beleriand. Choose any chapter or canto about this duo (or their later doppelgangers, Aragorn and Arwen), or any chapter from the Beren and Lúthien book for this challenge.

Commenting: Because “cheese rounds off the meal”, comment on something that was written specifically for the Holiday Feast challenge - any course.

Artwork: Imagine how, if The Silmarillion were made into a movie, the scene or character that Hollywood would ham up the most. Illustrate that scene or that person.

Meta: Pathos and the use of cliché are generally considered signs of poor writing. But are they always? Are there good and bad clichés? How can you tell the difference? And does it even matter? For this course, we would like you to explore cheesy, corny or clichéd aspects of the Legendarium, fanon, and/or writing in general.