Back to Middle-earth Month 2020: Endings and Beginnings

[independence1776]

Welcome to Back to Middle-earth Month 2020!

Our theme this year is "Endings and Beginnings." We are offering both a prompt generator for those who wish to start creating now (though please wait to post until March begins!) as well as daily prompts posted in March for those who like that particular format.

Though we chose the theme in December, it is certainly fitting due to Christopher Tolkien's recent passing. But it is with heavy hearts that we inform you of the reason for this year's theme: this is b2mem's final year. It will have had a good, enthusiastic, nine year run. Sadly, all things must come to an end.

BUT! Back to Middle-earth Month itself will not come to an end. B2MeM started off as a multi-group activity, with each group doing its own thing. (You can read the history of B2MeM on Fanlore.) We don't have a monopoly on the concept--it wasn't ours to begin with! If people want to keep on with B2MeM in the future, we welcome and encourage it.

As for what we are doing this year:

You can find the prompt generator here. There are nine fields: beginning (general words), canonical beginnings (for things that happened in canon), first line, ending, canonical endings, last line, LotR location, Silm location, and character groups. You can use one, some, or all fields and you may re-roll as many times as you like until you get prompt(s) that inspire you.

The daily prompts will be posted, as usual, around UTC midnight starting March 1.

A reminder: we post our prompts in this community and on our LiveJournal, Tumblr, and email newsletter. We also have an AO3 collection.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who can participate?

Anyone! It doesn’t matter if this is your first time in the Tolkien fandom or your fiftieth year; everyone is welcome. All genres, formats, and ratings of fanworks are also welcome.

How can I participate in B2MeM if I'm also creating something for a fandom event also running in March?

You can use B2MeM prompts in your fanwork(s) for the other event(s).

How can I participate if I don’t have a Dreamwidth account?

If you wish to leave comments on fanworks posted on Dreamwidth, you may use an anonymous comment. However, we do require anon comments to be signed. (For example, if your AO3 username is Frodofan1, please sign your comment Frodofan1.) Anonymous comments are automatically screened before they appear in the community, and unsigned comments will not be unscreened.

We welcome participation on other platforms if you do not wish to post fanworks on Dreamwidth, even platforms we don't have a mirror on. We welcome links pointing to your fanworks posted elsewhere. We also have an AO3 collection and the SWG has a challenge listing for B2MeM 2020.

If you do wish to post fanworks on Dreamwidth or link there to fanworks posted elsewhere, you will need a Dreamwidth account. You can sign up for a free account here. There is also OpenID available that allows log-in through Google, Facebook, Twitter, and LiveJournal.

A link list of Tumblr to Dreamwidth guides can be found here.

What sort of things do you consider to be fanworks?

It’s simple: if you consider it fanwork, so do we. We’ve had stories, artwork, cosplay, crafts, rec lists, fanmixes, and more. We welcome everything.

We only require that responses have a significant basis in Tolkien’s works. Crossovers and AUs are welcome, as are movieverse fanworks.

Is there a minimum amount of words, time spent, etc. in order to participate?

No! We want people to be as free to create as possible, whether this means writing a lone haiku or working on an epic novel, creating a single icon or a batch of a hundred, a sketch or a detailed painting, a moodboard or picspam, or whatever else you wish to work on.

What are your restrictions on content? Do you require warnings?

We welcome all Tolkien-based fanworks. There are no restrictions on content; the B2MeM community accepts all forms of fanworks from low-rated gen fluff to explicit incest. We do have a header that participants are required to use on Dreamwidth in order to allow people the ability to choose whether or not to view your fanwork. The header and tagging information post will be available shortly.

We require warnings for reasonable things that fellow fans might wish to avoid, such as violence, gore, explicit sex, incest, etc. OR you may use Choose Not to Warn. Choose Not to Warn indicates that the work may contain anything, including potentially triggering or explicit content. Participants who wish to avoid certain content should make their own decisions on whether to read or view CNTW entries.

Do I need to create something using all of the prompts?

No! You may choose to use one prompt or you can use as many as you wish. If you only want to create one fanwork for the month, you may use only one prompt or you can use as many in your fanwork as work for you.

Can I combine prompts into a single work?

Yes! How you do this is up to you.

Do I have to take the prompts literally?

No! We welcome any interpretation of the prompts; we encourage outside-of-the-box thinking. How you respond to the prompts is up to you.

Can I use works begun in previous years or other works in progress?

Yes! You are welcome to continue WIPs of all sorts with one or more B2MeM prompts. They do not have to be previous B2MeM works.

I signed up for a previous B2MeM event and didn’t finish. Can I still participate?

Yes! We do not penalize people.

Do I have to wait until after March to post my fanwork outside of B2MeM spaces?

No. We encourage crossposting to whatever sites you normally use.

What if I have a question that isn’t covered by the above?

Please ask us in the comments or email us at b2mem.mod@gmail.com.

Comments

[grundyscribbling]

Yay, B2MEM!
*counting down*

[independence1776]

Yay!

[hhimring]

As I said over on Discord, the prompt generator looks really great and I'm looking forward to using it, and to the other daily prompts, too.
Thank you for all the planning that has already gone into the event this year, and also for all the hard work and creativity in the eight previous years!
I'm sure that this will be a memorable final year for B2MeM in this form and for this DW community.

[independence1776]

Thank you. You are very welcome and we all hope so!

[philstar22]

I just discovered this while searching dreamwidth for something. I've been looking for something to get my sleeping muse back in gear, so this is perfect. How exactly do I sign up? I think I can catch up and get them all done by the end of the month.

[independence1776]

No sign-ups required, or even creating for all the prompts! Just create something for one or more of the prompts, follow our posting and tagging rules when you post your fanwork in the comm, and that's it.