August News

On July 27, 2009 Many Paths to Tread ...

Went online. In that time, we have grown to 89 members and more than 1,000 stories! The mods, Cathleen, Dawn Felagund, Dreamflower and Pearl Took would like to thank all of our members for their enthusiasm and support! We hope that our archive will continue to grow and thrive over the years, and that we will have many more stories to share with the world.

To celebrate, we have added a few new features to our archive. You will notice that we now have a counter on our home page, as well as a feature that will show which members are online at any given time. We have also expanded the Most Recent stories sidebar, and have added a third skin choice for your viewing of the archive. In addition to that, we have also added a new category: Art Gallery! That's right! You may now display photos of your fan art here at Many Paths to Tread! You are still allowed to post images within the body of your stories as illustrations. But now you may display other art that you have created, including, but not limited to, drawings, paintings, photomanips, needlework, sculpture, collage, mixed media, and other created items!

We do have a few specific rules regarding the artwork, most importantly the ratings, which will be confined to G and PG, unlike fanfic, which may go up to an R. For more explanation of this and other guidelines specific to the Art Gallery, please see our ratings page.

Take a few minutes to explore our new "bells and whistles"!

Changing Skins

MPTT offers three different skins--or layouts--for members to choose from. Changing skins is easy! Click on Account and choose Edit Preferences. At the bottom of the page, you will find a drop-down box with the options for skins listed. Select the skin that you want and click "Submit." When you click onto the next page, the site will display using the new skin you've selected.

Arda is the default skin for the site. Ainulindalë is a "low bandwidth" skin that uses few graphics. Thror's Map is our newest skin, added in honor of our first birthday, and is patterned after the map found in The Hobbit.

The July Challenge: Fixed-Length Ficlets

We had a total of 16 stories in the July Challenge! Authors, if you have not already done so, you may want to take a minute to upload your story! We mods will see to it soon if you do not, but it would save us the trouble, and you would be able to make sure that all the characters, genres, etc. are the ones you want.

The August Challenge

The August Challenge will have the theme "Two Sides to Everything". Stories should include and argument, debate or disagreement between two characters. The element for the challenge will be the topic of the debate. (The mods would like to thank Nautika for her suggestion). We invite other community members to suggest future challenges.)

The August challenge stories will be due the weekend of Friday, August 13, and will be revealed on Monday, August 16. Please tag your story "two sides". Please remember to use the header template on the community profile page, and to put the name of your story and your name in the subject line.

To request your elements, please leave a comment to this LiveJournal post. If you have not participated before, please leave an email address so that I can send you your elements. Or you can email the mods at aelfwina@gmail.com or virginia_lee_redcat@yahoo.com.

The Summer Comment Challenge: Scavenger Hunt

The Summer Comment Challenge is nearly ended! If you have been participating, and have not already done so, feel free to make a post telling of the items you found, and in which stories you found them, either in an email to our Yahoo!Community, or to this post on the LiveJournal Community or both.

The visit our Challenge Banner Page and choose your banner/icon set!

If you locate six of the items, you are a sharp-eyed Ranger.
If you locate eight of the items, you are an expert Elven archer.
If you locate ten of the items, you must be looking through a palantir.
If you locate all twelve of the items, you are proclaimed to be a Lord of the Eagles!

But if you are not quite finished yet, you have until July 31!

The Remix Challenge

There has been a gratifying interest in our Remix Challenge! If you have not already done so, please let us know as soon as possible whether you wish to participate, as we are going to start matching people up very soon! We will probably be sending out assignments in the next few days.

1. Each writer will be assigned an author and you may choose from any of her stories for your remix. We are considering giving particiapnts the choice to request an edited list of the assigned author's work if you feel looking at a large number of stories would prove overwhelming.
   
   NOTE: Authors may choose to designate any of her stories as "Safe Stories", meaning those stories are not up for the remix.
2. The length is still being discussed, but that is also much like the fic exchanges we do. The story should be longer than a drabble or one-page ficlet. More details on this with the official announcement.
3. Each participant will indicate what types of stories/genres she is willing to write. This will help us in matching people to an appropriate author. Again, this is like the Yule exchange. If you have a preference, please state this, and conversely, please let us know if there are genres you will not be willing to write. This will assist us in matching authors up appropriately.
4. The ratings will follow the GFIC main group standards which allow ratings G - PG13 only!
5. We will announce the challenge on July 27th and immediately match up participants and hand out the assignments so you will have almost 8 weeks to finish by the September 22nd due date, which of course, coincides with another important birthday!
6. It would help us immensely if everyone who is definitely decided about participating would drop us a line. That way, we'd be able to start the matching process in advance of the announcement.
7. Participants will not be told who has been assigned to remix their story! The posting will be anonymous for a few days just for the fun of guessing who wrote what. In this spirit, we also ask that you not share the information with others regarding which author you are remixing!
   
   NOTE: We will need some volunteers to "pinch hit" in case of unforeseen circumstances in which someone is unable to finish the assignment. We do ask that you consider the time commitment of taking on this challenge and be prepared to finish it in time. It functions much like a Fic Exchange, in which another person is expecting to receive a story in turn for the one she is writing, so please consider this when deciding whether or not to join in!

Volunteers still wanted!

Would anyone care to make banners and icons for the group challenges? We would like to develop a pool of volunteers to draw from. We currently have just one person helping us with this and it would be of great benefit to have more people on board. We will provide details about what kinds of things we need as soon as we come up with helpers. Just email one of the mods if you would like to try your hand at it! For an example of the kind of thing we need, see the Challenge Banner page and the Commenter Banner page.

Odd (but Harmless!) Site Bug

It has come to our attention that there is a rather odd bug on the MPTT site. Luckily, it is also a harmless one! When you enter a new story and click "Preview," the preview pane will show your story belonging to the most recently added series on the site. This is just a glitch; your story will not actually be added to that series, and when you click to post your story, the series field should display correctly.

Hobbit Ficathon

hobbit_ficathon is a LiveJournal community for hobbit-centric fic challenges! The community has been in existence since 2004, but had become inactive. It is now under new management and we are hoping to once more begin announcing challenges there!

The MEFAs

The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards are in full swing. Nominations are closed, and now's the time to begin Reading and Reviewing! There are several stories from MPTT nominated!

And also, a very Happy Fifth Anniversary to the Silmarillion Writers Guild, which just happens to share our birthday! SWG is hosting a birthday event, beginning August 10 and welcomes all Silmarillion writers and artists. Please see the website for more information on how to participate!

Posted by: MPTT Mods on 07/27/10 - 07:20 am(0 Comments)