Remembering 10 Years of Back to Middle-earth Month: Memories of 2006

[dreamflower]

Discussion post for 2006:

The first mention of Back to Middle-earth Month was in an anonymous contribution to middleearthnews on February 27, 2006:

Contributed by Someone-who-didn't-give-us-their-lj-name: (O_O) March 2006: Back to Middle-Earth Month

Miss the golden days of the Lord of the Rings fandom? Get homesick for Middle-Earth? Then this is for you!

You don't need to sign up anywhere to participate. But if you see this on your friends-page and like the idea, please post this text to your LJ to spread the word.

How to participate:

1. Pick a day of the week (or more than one) on which you resolve to always post something LotR-related in March, and let your friends-list know.

2. Go back and read your favourite chapters from the book, or watch the movies again. Let the beauty of LotR inspire you. And then, share the love.

3. Start your subject line with (B2MEM) when you post, and use a "b2mem" tag. This'll make it easy to spot your B2MEM-entries.

No matter if you just ramble about your undying love for LotR, picspam us, post wallpapers, icons, or write fan fic / create fan art, the plan is to get as many LotR-related entries on our friends-pages as possible throughout March.

Sounds good? We've been there, let's go back again!

The idea caught on, but the announcement was for very general activity. A few days later a somewhat more specific challenge was issued by there_n_back on March 1.

It may be found here.

Did you participate in that very first challenge? Did you make posts or write stories? If you did, please share your experience with us here in the comments. Give us links, share your anecdotes and memories.

Did you miss out on it, but find yourself curious about it? Check out the comments and ask questions and join in the discussions! And if you check out previous works, be sure to let the creator know how you liked them.

Comments

[dreamflower]

2006 was the first year I had heard of "Back to Middle-earth Month". There was no specific theme that year. During that month, I posted several fics, but I did other activities as well, as I noted in my last post of the month:

Well, this is the last day of "Back to Middle-earth Month". I've posted some fic--but also:

I knitted 81 rows on my Pippin scarf.
I did a calligraphy setting of Bilbo's Last Song.
I listened to "In Elven Lands" by The Fellowship, "Leaving Rivendell" and "Dawn at Rivendell" by the Tolkien Ensemble, and "Songs of Middle-earth" by The Hobbitons. Money well-spent.
I re-read The Adventures of Tom Bombadil.
I've read tons and tons of brilliant fic, some of which did not even feature hobbits (Elves and Men and Dwarves can be somewhat interesting if there are no new hobbit stories available).
I've obsessed about hobbits on the phone with danachan.
I embellished a purse with a hobbit themed collage.
I somehow or other managed to drag hobbits and/or LotR into my every conversation.

In other words, I didn't spend this month too differently than I do every other month...

I ♥ hobbits!

That first one was a lot of fun, though it was not organized like subsequent years. If you want to check out some of my activities, you can search the tag on my LJ: "b2mem 2006".

[dawn_felagund]

B2MeM that first year, as I remember it, was presented as a way to keep the Tolkien fandom and the energy from the movies from dying out. At least, that is how I interpreted it. I was fairly new to fandom myself; I had started the SWG less than a year prior, and I was posting my first major fanfic, Another Man's Cage. I was 24 years old and still rather fragile in a lot of ways, both as a human and as a human-who-writes. I did participate that first year; I wrote this post for B2MeM, about how I became interested in Tolkien and how it changed my life. (I didn't make any further B2MeM posts, but since Friday was my posting day for a new chapter of AMC, I did end up meeting the challenge.) The SWG also promoted this first B2MeM event in its newsletter, although I don't think anyone posted anything to the community for B2MeM.

B2MeM was rather perfectly timed for me and the SWG in a lot of ways. I was knew in fandom; my group was very new as well. B2MeM was something that we could run annually in the SWG that connected us to the broader fandom, which was one of our goals. (Tolkien fandom groups tended to be rather isolationist, and I wanted very badly to break that mold with the SWG; I didn't see why we couldn't all work together and support each other when needed; why the focus had to be on our differences of interpretation and opinion and not on our larger shared love of Middle-earth.) The next year, in 2007, I was scrolling back through the old newsletters and ran into the post about B2MeM and thought, "We should do something for that again!" There and Back Again, of course, did something as well, but this was the last year--to the best of my knowledge--that a group outside the SWG honored B2MeM until MPTT joined us down the road a ways. And that, of course, grew into B2MeM as it is today, where it has managed to free itself almost entirely from being an "SWG event" and "MPTT event" to be a "Tolkien fandom event." That really began with seeing the announcement and sharing it in the SWG newsletter out of a desperate desire to connect to the larger fandom and show that desire in the actions of my new group.

I wish I knew who posted that first announcement about B2MeM. I wonder if they see where their idea went and what they think of it.

As I look back at this first year and remember the context in which I (and the SWG) embraced this first B2MeM, it seems pretty amazing that it has in many ways done exactly what I wanted it to do when I shared it on the SWG. Fandom has become much more united. Groups like SWG and MPTT that pioneered B2MeM as we know it now have helped to keep the Tolkien fanfic community active beyond being simply another fandom that people post about on big sites like ff.net and AO3, and B2MeM has been a big part of what we do each year. It's pretty incredible to think that something so seemingly small actually did so much.

[dreamflower]

I am so grateful to people who came up with various ideas to keep the fandom fresh, from "Back to Middle-earth Month" to various challenges, new archives and awards.

[lindahoyland.livejournal.com]

I think the Alphabet challenge was my first BTME. I wrote a drabble for each letter.

[dreamflower]

I remember that.

[hhimring]

It looks as if the There N' Back challenge was posted by SatisMagic (she would have been JunoMagic then, I guess) and also supported by HASA and TFF.
Is anyone around this year who wrote anything for that Tale of Years challenge?

[dreamflower]

Thank you for the information! I'd no idea she was behind it!

[hhimring]

I was just going by who made the actual post--JunoMagic and Aranel Took were (or are) apparently the mods of There N' Back, so presumably they discussed it beforehand...