Two people I know in real life are traveling down under this spring, to New Zealand, not to attend WorldCon, home of the Hugo Awards ceremony, but just for vacations. Although, I wonder if their plans have changed since I last spoke or saw them over two months ago now. Much ado about something is occurring everywhere now, but don’t even compare it to 1918. Regardless, a trip to New Zealand would check off two items on my bucket list: 1) to see the Southern Hemisphere’s night sky (stars and constellations I cannot see from 39 degrees north latitude) and 2) to visit the closest thing to Middle-earth on this Earth.
Continue reading “Hugo Hiatus”Tag: moot
MiddleMoot 2019 Session Sampling
MiddleMoot 2019 (last month in Waterloo, Iowa), like most conferences, consists of multiples sessions competing for the same time slots. Like all good stories, plays and, in this case, moots, there is a beginning, a middle and an end where we all gather together. In between, decisions must be made.
Since I wanted to support my fellow Withywindle Smial presenters, Sessions 2 and 4 were already decided. Thus I need to decide between female grief as foresight or interruptions and musing for the first session. I went with the former for various reasons, but mostly because I’m not a writer of fiction (just a reader), my life is one long interruption and I was intrigue by the concept of female grief as foresight and subcreation, especially after reading about Aragorn’s mother, Gilraen. I created an audio recording of the session on my iPad, but Jude Bleile was so soft-spoken, even with a microphone, that I won’t share that recording here to avoid listener frustration.
Continue reading “MiddleMoot 2019 Session Sampling”Second Submitted Draft of My First FanFiction
Yesterday, I bravely supplied my first rough draft of my first ever fanfiction in a post about an interactive session I attended at MiddlMoot 2019. Today, I’m posting my second draft, and the one I submitted to be read and voted upon by the attendees of MiddleMoot.
First Foray Into FanFiction
On Saturday, October 12th, I attended my second MiddleMoot, hosted on the campus of Hawkeye Community College in Waterloo, Iowa. After the Welcome Address delivered by Robert Steed in the auditorium of Tama Hall, the first session I attended was a fascinating look at the theme of female grief as foresight and subcreation by Jude Bleile (more details forthcoming in a separate post). The following session I selected from the program was entitled “The Journey of FanFiction” presented by Nicole Evans, a fellow member of the Tolkien Society of Kansas City, a librarian, writer and blogger.
Nicole spoke briefly about the history of fanfiction, even citing examples from her adolescence (over 12,000 on one site alone but who’s counting?) and explained the interactive nature of her session. We, the audience, would select five pieces of a story puzzle that we then would assemble creatively into a short fanfiction story. We could then enter our story into a pool to be read and voted on by attendees for a prize to be awarded at the end of the conference.
The five elements we would drew were Character, Object, Setting, Plot and First Lines. The photo below displays my drawing. We had approximately thirty minutes to compose our tales. We were to underline each item as we used it in our story so the readers/judges could confirm we had used all five.
Continue reading “First Foray Into FanFiction”Corey Olsen would write fanfiction using Odo as a character, the Arkenstone for an object, Mordor as a setting, sneaking into the Council of Elrond for a plot and start off with a first line of ‘I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.’
Audience Participation, The Journey of FanFiction
MiddleMoot Announced for October 2018
Signum University, 
the Mythgard Institute, 
and the Tolkien Society of Kansas City are proud to announce the inaugural MiddleMoot 2018, a one-day symposium addressing the role of Nature, Man, and Industrialization in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien on Saturday, October 6, 2018, at Park University in Parkville, Missouri. A mixture of paper presentations, panels, and discussions will be offered along with a keynote address by guest of honor Dr. Corey Olsen, “The Tolkien Professor.”
On his teaching website, The Tolkien Professor, Dr. Olsen brings his scholarship on Tolkien to the public, seeking to engage a wide and diverse audience in serious intellectual and literary conversation. His website features a series of detailed lectures on The Hobbit and recordings of the weekly meetings of the Silmarillion Seminar, which worked its way through the Silmarillion chapter by chapter, as well as more informal Q&A sessions with listeners. His book Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, was published by Houghton Mifflin in September 2012.
Cost is $40 per person, and will include a light breakfast (coffee and pastries), and gourmet boxed lunch. You can select your preferences on the registration page. Registration and information table opens at 8:30am with opening address to start at 9am.
If you wish to be considered for a paper, panel, or presentation at MiddleMoot, please send an abstract of less than 250 words to tolkiensocietykc@gmail.com on any of the above topics related to Nature, Man, or Industrialization (more information to follow on Signum website).
Please help the Tolkien Society of KC as we endeavor to make this moot waste-free!
‘Every tree has its enemy, few have an advocate.’
– J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 241
Official Signum page: https://signumuniversity.org/event/middlemoot-2018/