June Challenge: Pride
June is Pride Month, a time to recognize and honor the contributions of LGBTQIA+ people, whose work and identity (or both) have often gone unrecognized in history. This month's challenge will involve a prompt by an LGBTQIA+ person. There are music, art, poetry, and quotation prompts.
Comment here to request your prompt or email us at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org. Please specify which type(s) of prompts (music, art, poem, or quote) you would like us to pick from--and it's fine also if you have no preference in this area and wish us to surprise you!
Please note that fanworks do not have to be about LGBTQIA+ characters or topics, although as always, there is a little something extra for those who take on that extra bit of challenge. (Please help out your stamp-delivering mods by specifying in the author's notes if you include LGBTQIA+ characters, if it is not obvious from the summary or notes on the fanwork.)
Challenge entries are due by July 11 in order to receive a stamp. Challenges do not close, so late entries are always welcome; late entries do not receive stamps, however.
Some Housekeeping Notes: If you have looked at your stamp collection in the past *mumblemumble* months, you know that I am waaay behind. I'll spare the gory details, but this has been a bear of a year. With the school year now over, I will be catching up on collections in the next couple of weeks. My sincerest thanks to everyone for their patience.
Next month's challenge will ask participants to create a fanwork that solves a problem that exists in the canon: areas where the canon is contradictory, unclear, or just downright impossible. Common examples would include the parentage of Gil-galad, the existence of plants before the sun, or the unlikelihood that Maedhros dangled on Thangorodrim for fifty years, like some of the timelines claim.
Please propose canon problems to use as prompts next month! What drives you nuts in the texts? What answers do you wish you had? Comment here or email us at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org to suggest prompts. You may suggest as many as you want.
Also, a friendly reminder that, if you use SWG challenge prompts for a long-running event like Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang, you can get stamps even if you post the challenge entry late because of the event deadline. So, for example, if you use a Pride prompt in your TRSB story but the story can't be posted till August, just mark the challenge when you crosspost to the SWG archive and let us know you need the stamp for it.