Celebrating the SWG's 10th Birthday!

[dawn_felagund]

At the end of the month, on July 28, the SWG will celebrate its tenth birthday. This has been an incredible ten years for me and, I know, a lot of our members as well: Ten years filled with new friends and new insights, overzealous muses and hungry bunnies, a little drama and a lot of enthusiasm, and thousands and thousands of fanworks. My comods and I have been discussing and planning for months now how to celebrate our tenth birthday. In true Tolkienian fashion, we wanted it to be a way to give back to the members and friends who have shown this community so much love and support over the last decade.

We have two gifts that we've put together and would like to share with the Tolkien fan community: a brand new shiny Silmfic prompt generator (and a writing contest with a drawing for prizes for anyone who wants to take it for a spin!) and a birthday card collection so that you can show love and appreciation for the people who make this fandom such a wonderful place.

Silmfic Prompt Generator and Prize Drawing

Please note that the deadline for the contest has been extended until August 15!

Over the past month, my comods and I have been collaborating to build a random Silmfic prompt generator. If you've ever been in the mood to write but had trouble coming up with an idea (or if you loved all those BINGO prompts from B2MeM 2012 ...), this generator was made with you in mind! With ten categories--one for each year we've been in existence--and thousands of prompts within those categories, it results in all but endless combinations of prompts that are almost certainly unique to you. You can roll in as few or as many categories as you want, and you can reroll as many times as you want. Maybe you just want a new character to explore in a character study; maybe you want to challenge yourself to write something using all ten categories. (And trust me, when you roll all ten, it gets pretty bizarre pretty fast!) It is intentionally flexible so it can be used in any way you see fit to inspire your fanworks.

Now we can hardly unveil this new gizmo without encouraging people to use it. During the month of July, we encourage our members to play with the prompt generator and create fanworks based on it. On August 1, we will be holding a drawing for anyone who participates to win some Silmarillion-themed prizes. (I will have more details on these very shortly; Mr. Felagund is handling this part of the event and has come up with many ideas, but I honestly just haven't had a chance to sit down with him and make some decisions because *pointed look at generator and birthday cards* ... I've been otherwise engaged! See below for the prize list!)

10th Birthday Prize Drawing Rules

1. All stories written using the Silmfic prompt generator during the month of July are eligible for the drawing.


2. In order to be eligible, stories created for the contest must
   
   
   • be posted to the SWG archive at silmarillionwritersguild.org. Stories posted to our LiveJournal, Dreamwidth, Yahoo! or Tumblr groups are not eligible.
   
   
   • select 10th Birthday Celebration Contest from the Challenges list. Please note that there is also a 10th Birthday Celebration NO CONTEST option for those who wish to write using the generator in honor of our birthday but don't want to be entered in the drawing; make sure you select the correct challenge.
   
   
   • list the prompts you used to create the story in the Story Notes or Chapter Notes.
   
   
   
3. You can roll for just one category or all ten. You can reroll in a category if you want to, so if you end up with an impossible prompt or something you're just not comfortable writing, feel free to try again. And again and again. (Seriously, we have no idea if and how many times you reroll! Have fun with it!)


4. Each story posted will result in one entry into the drawing. (So if you post five stories, you will have five entries into the drawing.)


5. Each participant is eligible to win only once.


6. If you win, you must be willing to provide a mailing address for us to send your prize to you.


7. If you post an entry as part of an existing collection, please make sure to select 10th Birthday Celebration Contest from the challenges list and identify the prompts you used in the chapter notes for the piece or pieces that you are entering. This is how our mods will know from the table of contents of your collection which pieces in the collection are being entered, so it is important to place the prompts in the correct location.


8. You can add a chapter to an existing work-in-progress using the prompt generator. Again, make sure to select the correct challenge and include your prompts in the chapter notes for the chapter(s) you are entering.


9. The contest begins July 1 and ends on July 31 August 15 at midnight Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). We will draw winners on August 1 August 16. Winners will be notified at the email address they have listed on the SWG archive, so please make sure this is correct if you are participating. If we do not hear back within a week, we will re-draw a new winner. If you expect to be offline during the week after the drawing, please let us know ahead of time so that we do not give away your prize if you win and cannot respond within a week.

As always, questions are welcome here or at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org.

10th Birthday Contest Prizes

The three prizes are:

• A book set, including a 1st edition copy of The Silmarillion, Perilous and Fair: Women in the Works and Life of J. R. R. Tolkien (essay collection, edited by Janet Brennan Croft), and The Road to Middle-earth by Tom Shippey.


• Your choice of a print by Tolkien fan artist and professional illustrator Jenny Dolfen.


• A vintage, hard-to-find jigsaw puzzle (500 pieces) featuring an illustration from Tolkien's Father Christmas Letters.

Birthday Cards

Of course, fandom--even the fanfic community--is about more than just writing. There are the readers, reviewers, betas, researchers, podfic readers, volunteers, artists, and friends who keep us coming back, day after day and year after year. During the month of July, we hope to provide a way to acknowledge and celebrate the myriad people in our fandom lives who make this community fun.

During the month of July, we invite participants to send birthday cards to the SWG members who make the fandom a better place for them. Our generous volunteers have made over one hundred (!) beautiful digital cards that you can select from and send to the SWG members of your choice along with a personalized message. Our birthday card form includes instructions and allows you to easily select what you'd like to send and to whom. The master list of birthday cards includes full-sized images of all the cards you can choose from.

On August 1, we will begin compiling digital albums of cards for each recipient that they can enjoy and return to whenever they want.

I want to close out by thanking the wonderful volunteers who made all of this possible. Our card artists included heartofoshun, indy1776, klose, ladyelleth, oloriel, and ysilme. ladyelleth, lindahoyland, oloriel, and sirielle generously granted use of their photography and/or artwork for the project. These contributors have created true works of art for our members and friends to share with each other. (And there are birthday cards for bannermakers and artists, just sayin' ... ;) Last but certainly not least, my wonderful team of comods helped with everything from writing those thousands of prompts to running database queries to nitpicking my writing to thinking of things I never would have.

I hope everyone enjoys our month-long birthday celebration! Here's to another ten years! <3

Comments

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

These are terrific. I made a lot of banners, but honestly, and not from false modesty, the ones made by others made me blush at my contributions when faced by such enormous talent, artistic judgment, and technical competence! Beautiful work. (I have brass balls to have put my efforts in their company.) I am going to use these to death--I have so much to thank and praise so many for in this fandom!

Dawn with her imagination, intelligence, and relentless energy, along with the mods of this community and the untold volunteers over the years, have made my favorite site and fandom home a shining Silmaril among fandom websites.

Thank you everyone for everything you have done and do to make the SWG what it is. Looking forward to the next ten years!

[elfscribe5.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, the banners are amazing! Thanks so much to the artists. You guys rock. The whole celebration looks wonderful, Dawn. Thank you to you and everyone else involved. Um, now to find some time to write something using the generator.

[talullahred.livejournal.com]

The writing challenge sounds fun - I took a look at the generator and it's pretty cool! I already have five stories to write this month, but if things go smoothly... maybe a sixth? ;)

Love the cards!

[hhimring]

Amazing! The cards are wonderful and that generator is impressive.

With the cards, it looks as if it's okay to send the addressee more than one, if you want to compliment them for different things?

[binkaslibrary.livejournal.com]

The cards are AWESOME!!! I already sent a few earlier today and I plan on continuing until the end of July :) So much fun!

Thank you everyone!

[moetushie]

This is all so great! I feel like the prompt generator is calling me!

[dawn_felagund]

Yes, absolutely! As I was putting them on the site yesterday, I was thinking of who I could see as the recipient of each, and I definitely had some repeats. The message field is also generous in how many characters it allows (the host of the album restricts this, hence the rather random character count), and I've already seen some requests come through that include the card and then in the message a note along the lines of "And also ..." with a list of the other things the person has done. So it's really up to how you want to do it--we're fine with either way! :)

[dawn_felagund]

I've been living with the prompt generator--as in it's pretty much always open in my browser--for several weeks now, and it is too much fun! :D I roll just to see what it gives me. Now for the time to write some of those things ...

[maglor-20.livejournal.com]

Congratulations!

And I think I'm already in love with the prompt generator. :)

[dawn_felagund]

Thank you! I have been having too much fun with it over the past few weeks, as it has come to life in stages. We'd get a new section underway and I'd upload the beginnings of it to the server because, you know, I had to test the code. Sometimes over and over and over again ... ;)

[dawn_felagund]

Don't underestimate your work! They are lovely and very often clever. I had more than one LOL when getting a batch in my email!

and relentless energy

I am laughing at this because I felt like steamrolled gelatin after pulling a 12-hour day on this yesterday! :D

a shining Silmaril among fandom websites.

Thank you. This means so much to me. A huge amount of work has gone into this group over the last decade but we must be doing something right because I still love it and cannot imagine doing anything else.

[dawn_felagund]

I know, right? The generator has been coming to life in stages over the past couple of weeks. I play with it often in the interest of, you know, testing the code and all. ;) I've rolled some amazing prompts; now just to find the time to write them! It is not going anywhere, though, so I hold out hope for someday! :D

[dawn_felagund]

Thank you! Five stories?! Wow! Well, you can always do the two birds, one stone thing and add a prompt from the generator to one (or five!) of those stories! :D

[dawn_felagund]

I smiled when I saw your cards in my inbox this morning because that is so in-character! :) You are definitely one of fandom's unsung heroes for being so generous with your kindness and appreciation of others.

[independence1776]

So many lovely cards to choose from!

The prompt generator has already claimed a victim… One (will be upon editing) double drabble written. And this just from going, "I'm not sure I'll be able to do this, but I'll poke at it to see what pops up." The third or fourth prompt went "Write me now!"

[dawn_felagund]

The cards turned out really impressive in my of-course-not-at-all-biased opinion! :D

I just rolled the generator for kicks and giggles and ended up with tragedy, birth, running through a sunflower field, and Amras. Yeah, going to forget about that now, as I have a beta to finish, a newsletter to compile, and an essay to write! :D

[elfscribe5.livejournal.com]

Have you or any of the mods actually calculated how many fic possibilities that generator could produce? The mind boggles. I played with it last night when I should have been going to bed. Total fun. Kudos to you and your team for developing it.

[dawn_felagund]

I haven't but the next time I have the file open, I will! It would be in the millions, if not more. One of the categories (locations) has over 500 prompts; events/time periods has over 300.

[independence1776]

They really, really did! Mine are decent; others are spectacular.

Good luck with everything! Though I hope you're able to sneak some time in to write because that is an awesome set of prompts.

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

Aww! Thanks so much and thanks for everything you do!

I wanted there to be a lot, because I am going to need a lot of them and I did not want to send everyone the same five cards. So, yeah, I love the choices! I bet I use them all.

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

I thought of YOU precisely when I saw it!!!! OMG! It should suit you perfectly!!!

I've already started asking myself if it is cheating if I keeping dickering with the keys until I at last get the one I wanted to write already!

It certainly is endless fun to play with!

[binkaslibrary.livejournal.com]

You are going to smile a lot because I have a plan...

And I'm no hero, mind you, I have too much time on my hands ;)

*hug*

[talullahred.livejournal.com]

That's an idea! I will keep it in mind. :)

[dawn_felagund]

It's funny because as you were sending me your cards, I was thinking, "I bet she made this one to send to ____." And now you're starting to send them, and I see I was very often right! :D

I once again seriously underestimated what was actually made. One day I will stop planning for 20 and ending up surprised at 100!

[dawn_felagund]

I think it's almost a given to have to reroll if you use more than one canon category because, otherwise, it very often comes up with impossible combinations, i.e., write a story about Beren at Cuivienen! I like rolling all the literary categories and then one or two of the canon ones. I've yet to roll all ten and come up with a writeable story on the first try!

[dawn_felagund]

One of the things I love about all the cards is the different styles. We had some incredible graphics artists working on this, but I love everyone's contributions, which were very often clever--like yours with the screencaps!

I've sadly resigned myself to no fiction-writing till the MA is done in the winter, but I'm growing quite a herd of plotbunnies ... ;)

[ladybrooke]

Ooooh. If the fact that I made a generator website wasn't clue enough, I love those things. :D Especially making seemingly impossible combinations and then making them all fit together.

I just rolled Suspense, Power, A Hostile Enviroment, '... nothing could escape the sight and the scent ... nor could any enchantment stay him...' The Silmarillion, Feanorians, Celeborn, Denethor of the Laiquendi, Celegorm and Curufin speak against Finrod, and Walls of Night. I realize this seems impossible, but I think I know how it's all going to work out. And then everybody can take two steps back and decide I'm not quite right.

Thanks to everybody involved for all the work on banners and generators and everything else that has gone into the site over the years! I'll try to send cards, but social interaction is hard right now and I don't want to make promises I can't keep. So thank you to everyone who sees this! There's a reason I've stayed in this fandom for so long.

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

Oh, good I thought it was me being neurotic.

[scarlet1061.livejournal.com]

The Silmfic Prompt Generator is hilarious.
I kept playing with it and couldn't stop laughing from some of the options/ combinations.
I love it. Great idea and kudos to all those who took part in making it :-)

And the Birthday Cards, wow, they are just beautiful. :-)

Happy birthday SWG and thank you Dawn and everyone else for making this wonderful place.

:-)

[ysilme]

These ideas are so awesome, and the postcard collection is just marvellous! ♥

One thing I'm unclear about with the postcards: will the added personalised text be publicly visible, or will it just go to the recipient?

[dawn_felagund]

That's a great combination! It does seem workable, even if it would be difficult to do so. I got one last night that included crackfic as a genre and "Things need not have happened to be true" as a quote which seemed like carte blanche for doing whatever I wanted with the other completely mismatched prompts! :D

There is no official recognition for anyone who makes something with all ten prompts, but they will earn my admiration! As I told Oshun, I've found it most useful to roll in all the literary categories and then one (maybe two) of the canon categories. There are some really obscure prompts in the canon categories!

[dawn_felagund]

The original germ of the idea for the generator was Rhapsody's. Elleth suggested the use of the JavaScript that we used. We all collaborated to come up with 12 categories; I rearranged them to make it ten. Russa ran the SQL queries to figure out popular and rare characters on the site. Then we all collaborated in a shared Google Doc to come up with the ridiculous number of prompts in the other eight categories. So it was truly collaborative! :D I was regularly updating the code on the server as we worked, so I have been distracted by it for weeks now! :D

[dawn_felagund]

Here is how we have set it up: We have set up a special Photobucket account for the birthday, and each recipient will have their own password-protected album with all of their cards. The messages are entered as the description on the card (hence the rather odd 2,048 character limit on the message field). In this way, recipients can use the Photobucket tools to display their cards wherever they want. I just tried this, and the description (i.e., the message) is not included in the HTML code. So the messages should be private, unless the recipient would choose to share them. However, I'd still caution against including something you absolutely wouldn't want shared for the simple fact that we are using a third-party image host and therefore have little control over future changes that might make material that is currently viewable only on the album included in, say, the HTML code generated for sharing that image. Also, there is the possibility that recipients will share the passwords to their albums with others, and it would certainly be their right to do so.

I should also note that all requests are sent to the moderator email, which auto-forwards to all of the site mods. So the mods see anything that is sent on the birthday card form.

Truly private messages I would recommend sending through the contact form on the site that is found on each member's account. That goes directly to the member without even stopping with the mods first.

[ysilme]

Thanks for the detailed info! :o) I didn't plan to write truly private messages, but I would have changed some of them a bit had he postcards been on public display by default, like, say, the T&F Banners or so.