Admin Post: August Challenge

[hhimring]

Thank you very much for your engagement with this community over the past month!

Here is the tolkienshortfanworks challenge for August.

The thematic challenge for August is: "magic" trees.
This could be any variety and degree of enchantment, powers or sentience: the Trees of Valinor, the White Tree, Old Man Willow, Huorns, Mirkwood, etc.

The formal challenge is: call and response.
This is essentially the idea that there is a leader or lead voice that makes the calls and a group that responds, whether in music and song, in poetry, or in dialogue and maybe other forms of prose.
Typical for call and response are all kinds of working songs from all over the world, choral music with solo voices, and some religious traditions. Think also of cheerleading and political speech-making and any kind of gathering where someone is trying to whip up a mood.
But feel free to adapt in any way you like. At a pinch, your chorus doing responses can be a group of one and you could have just two participants!
There are Wikipedia entries for inspiration with some examples:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_and_response
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_and_response_(music)

Usual reminder that in order to post the fill to this community or to the related collection on AO3, the fanwork can only have a word count up to 1000 words and must be linked to a Tolkien fandom.
Rec lists and podfics can be posted as fills for thematic prompts, as long as the fanworks concerned meet those conditions.

Also we continue to welcome other pieces unrelated to any challenge, of course, including cross-posts and older stories, as long as they meet the criteria!

Comments

[silver_trails]

I will still write a story for one of my OCs. And this challenge sounds great! =)

[hhimring]

Thank you!
As you know, prompt fills are welcome at any time!
And I'm glad you like the August challenge.

[vamp_ress]

I read Elif Shafak's "The Island of Missing Trees" a while ago and I immediately wanted to write something like this for LOTR. Having a tree as the narrator of the story is such an innovative idea - and I think it would fit Tolkien's world perfectly.

Nothing ever came of that idea, but I'd still love to read something like it. So I'm giving this bunny away. If anyone feels like feeding and nurturing it, go ahead. (And if it gets you to read Elif Shafak, that's also a win!)

[hhimring]

I haven't read Elif Shafak's story.
But there is at least one tree-as-narrator story already in the fandom. Of course I don't know whether it's in any other way like Elif Shafak's.
The story by Aldwen is too long to post in a rec post for the August challenge, so I will just post a link here in this comment: https://archiveofourown.org/works/39881607

[vamp_ress]

Oh thanks for the rec! I will definitely check this one out!!