Back to Middle-earth Month

• 2007 (t_n_b)­­ Æ ­ like Ælfwine came ærly.



• 2007 (SWG)­­ In that time the last of the Noldor set sail from the Havens and left Middle­earth for ever. And latest of all the Keepers of the Three Rings rode to the Sea, and Master Elrond took there the ship that Círdan had made ready. In the twilight of autumn it sailed out of Mithlond, until the seas of the Bent World fell away beneath it, and the winds of the round sky troubled it no more, and borne upon the high airs above the mists of the world it passed into the Ancient West, and an end was come for the Eldar of story and of song.



• 2009­­ As a citizen of Middle­earth, one day you wake up with a choice: yesterday or tomorrow. Which would you pick and why?



• 2011­­ “Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain." ­Friedrich Schiller.
  
  Write a story or poem or create artwork that illustrates this quotation.



• 2012­­ N39

This year's event was our biggest B2MeM yet in terms of participation, but it was also the biggest in terms of volunteers who played roles both large and small--but none insignificant--behind the scenes. B2MeM would not have happened without them, and I want to be sure that they are acknowledged for their contributions to our community. A challenge of this scope for about 90 participants takes literally dozens of hours each day to make happen. One or even a few people cannot do this on their own. We owe our volunteers for the success of this year's challenge!

A challenge without participants isn't much of a challenge, so one of the biggest tasks to start is getting the word out. Rhapsody, Erulisse, and Nath contributed their skills as digital artists to make banners and icons for this year's participants. Dwim, Linda Hoyland, Levade, oshun, and Mirach all helped get their word out beyond the SWG and MPTT communities. Both of these tasks are vital to ensuring that B2MeM reaches beyond the sponsoring communities; B2MeM always has, after all, been an event for the entire Tolkien fan community.

As noted above, this year's B2MeM would not have been nearly as much fun without the amazing array of 105 (105!!) BINGO cards to choose from. This year's card creators were Dwim, Independence1776, Himring, grey_gazania, Lyra, Dreamflower, Allie Meril, oshun, Elleth, Aliana, Pengolodh, Erulisse, Foxrafer, Celeritas, Beruthiel, Marta, Mirach, Linda Hoyland, Kenaz, havamahal, Tul, Angelica, Rhapsody, Altariel, Eärillë, CrackinAndProudOfIt, and Febobe. Many of the card creators made their own cards as well. In many cases, however, they sent the prompts to the mods and our talented graphic artists Rhapsody, Elleth, and grey_gazania turned them into BINGO cards that were quite often works of art themselves.

With about 90 participants and 105 cards, tracking who has claimed what cards and what needs to be done to turn a card request into a player page is a truly herculean effort. Angelica managed all of the administrative records and contacted participants to let them know the status of their requests. The resulting Google Document is scary-big--so big that it won't even open on my laptop anymore without a fuss--but her efforts kept everything running smoothly behind the scenes.

Dreamflower is to thank for the connection between BINGO and Bingo--Baggins that is--and for the idea of honoring the 75th anniversary of The Hobbit. She also created the backstory for this year's event.

In order to keep B2MeM accessible to participants using screen readers, a team of volunteers converted those 105 image cards into text-only cards. Thank you to Rhapsody, Angelica, Russandol, and Pearl Took for your efforts in keeping B2MeM accessible to all.

Rhapsody created the winners' ribbons and--with the help of her young son--was also our medium with Lady Probability, as she drew the BINGO numbers.

A handful of volunteer jobs required daily tasks throughout the month of March. First are our community tag-wranglers, who tagged posts there, making it possible to visit the community and find stories and art related to your favorite characters, genres, and challenges. Thank you to Independence1776 and Zdenka for their considerable efforts in this.

The card stampers were not only the volunteers who updated the player page images every day; they were also cheerleaders, question-answerers, and the keepers of the confetti for when their participants won a BINGO. They also added new cards to player pages once the challenge had started, freeing me up to do other things. Thank you to Lyra, grey_gazania, Russandol, and Rhapsody for their tireless cheer, endless supply of virtual ink, and strong stamping hands. A special thanks to Olorime, whose invaluable administrative help at the beginning of the month kept me sane while juggling a double stamping load after one of our stampers had an emergency.

Finally, there is the moderation team, who do everything else that still needs doing after all of the above are done: Rhapsody, Angelica, Russandol, and Dreamflower. It is truly a pleasure to work with such an amazing moderation team.

If I have missed mentioning someone, please accept my apologies and assurances that it was not intentional; I have been keeping a handwritten acknowledgments list for months, and any ommission was likely a silly oversight. Please contact me and I'll correct the list so that you receive proper credit for your efforts.

Again, thank you to everyone who assisted with this year's B2MeM!

• Unless your LJ handle is exactly the same as the name you're using for B2MeM, don't forget your name on your comment. Yes, we can figure out that Lady Dawn and Dawn Felagund are the same person, but when skimming dozens of comments for her assigned players, it becomes very easy for a stamper to overlook a name that doesn't fall into the range of alphabet she's been assigned.


• Please list the names of the cards that you need stamped. If you want to include the prompts as well, you certainly can, but we don't need this information. Just your name and the names of the cards you need stamped.


• If you're requesting stamps for two different numbers, please comment on both posts with the respective stamps that you need. So if you wrote a story including prompts for both O68 and O67, kindly put your requests for the O68 stamps on the O68 post, and your request for the O67 stamps on the O67 post.

olorime001

indy1996

lignota

angelica_ramses

rhapsody11

nelyo_russandol

oloriel