B2MeM Day Thirty-One: Valinor

[dawn_felagund]

Photo courtesy of Carlos Mendes.

March 31: Valinor

No holiday destination tops Valinor for adventure and luxury! Lounge on the beach at Alqualonde, hear Valmar's famous bell choir perform every hour on the hour, and relish the opulence of the art and culture of Tirion. The adventuresome will enjoy hiking and exploring the Pelori, the world's tallest mountain range, within a day's drive of Valinor's top tourist destinations. Cruises available from all major Elven cruise lines!

Today's Challenge:
"Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain."
Friedrich Schiller

Write a story or poem or create artwork that illustrates this quotation.

Passport Stamp:
Once you complete the challenge, you may save today's image or copy the code below to display your passport stamp wherever HTML is acceptable. To have your stamp added to your passport, please comment on this post.

<img src="http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/images/b2mem11/valinor.png" alt="Valinor Passport Stamp" />

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Well, everyone, this is it: the last challenge in our month-long event!

However, although we won't be posting anymore challenges, we still welcome late responses, and we will still gladly stamp passports for responses completed after the conclusion of the event. If you've completed all 31 challenges, if you could note this on your post when you complete today's challenge, it will let the mods who stamp passports double-check that we haven't missed any days for you. I'd encourage everyone with a passport to check that passport in about a week to make sure we haven't missed any stamps.

This event was truly an example of how many hands make light work. Many thanks to the mods of SWG (Rhapsody, Tarion, and Angelica) and MPTT (Dreamflower, Cathleen, and Pearl Took) for making an ambitious challenge seem almost easy to run to their overworked comod (me), who doubted her sanity in wanting to host a major event in the midst of her student teaching internship. From writing challenges to stamping passports every day, you made this event not only run but run smoothly--thank you!

Many thanks to all of our participants. Whether you wrote one challenge or thirty-one, we appreciate that you've shared your creativity with us and have continued to support this annual project.

Hope to see you all next year! :)

Comments

Epilogue by Mirach

[ave eva (from livejournal.com)]

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6794887/31/B2MeM_2011_Haradhrim_Nights
or
http://www.storiesofarda.com/chapterview.asp?sid=6779&cid=29592

This is the last chapter! It's one continuous story, incorporating each of the 31 prompts. Thank you for a wonderful month, it was a great writing experience! At the beginning I wondered if it will be even possible to do, and before every prompt I was a little afraid it will be something so far from the storyline, that I won't be able to incorporate it. At the end, many of the prompts took the story in an entirely different direction, forced me to change POV or introduce a new character. The amazing thing is, that all those characters found their logical place in the story, and even became necessary for the plot later.

The greatest troubles I had with incorporating a prompt were for Sirion (12th day) - it was quite hard to the way how different races relate to Nature when writing a story about assassins in Harad... But at the end, a dream sequence saved the day =) On the other side, the easiest was 29 (mordor), because it fitted exactly with what should happen in that chapter of the story. I also found out it is possible to plan a storyline to an extent when writing such story - you decide what happens, the prompt tell you how it happens. The result is a story that would look entirely different without the prompts, and that's a great adventure. So once again, thank you!

There is one more thing I would like to share. I want to offer a special prize for all who fulfilled all 31 challenges. Some of you might remember the group photo from the previous year, and how Aragorn was inspired by the magazine with photos from Oscar... Well, here is the Oscaragorn! http://mirachravaia.deviantart.com/art/Oscaragorn-199307541

I can add the names to the picture if the mods provide them to me, and then they can send it to the emails. Or I'll send the original sized file to the mods who can add the names to it - what you find better.

(P.S. Three days before the end I found out you can post in LJ under a facebook account. Better late than never... =))

Re: Epilogue by Mirach

[rhapsody11.livejournal.com]

Oh well, indeed. :) Congrats, I also updated your passport to reflect this awesome achievement!