Teitho

Teitho is a monthly fanfiction challenge for the Lord of the Rings fandom. Teitho means "Write!" in Sindarin, one of Tolkien's invented elven languages. Teitho was originally a gen challenge, with neither slash nor smut allowed, but has since expanded to allow all types of stories and art up to an M rating. The challenge was an original idea by Aragornwriter and is now run by carawyn, Sian22, and lotrfan. Past moderators are Alina, Michelle, Nautika, StarLight , Mirach, and Karri. It has been running non-stop since 2005.
The challenge originally focused on stories either about Aragorn or Legolas - or both, and an author writing for Teitho was required to include at least one of these characters, be it in passing or as the protagonist. Eventually, the challenge expanded to include "character mentioned by Tolkien in any of his works set in Middle-earth"; the challenge has "kept the emphasis on friendship in the stories - this is not a rule, just a recommendation to keep the spirit of the original contest even through the changes."About Teitho, Tumblr, accessed 28 December 2023. There is no minimum wordcount, authors can send in drabbles or poems. But the story should not be longer than approximately twenty pages to give readers a fair chance to read all stories in the two-week voting period. When Teitho changed its rules, it also began accepting art.
The most obvious feature of Teitho is the fact that stories are posted anonymously. While there is a number of faithful authors returning to Teitho month after month, the fact that posting is done anonymously makes the challenge attractive for new writers as well. They have a chance to get their stories listed right next to well-known authors while readers are more likely to vote for the best story (instead for their favourite author), simply because they do not know who wrote which story. Of course it adds a little whodunit for readers as well, as some like to guess and place authors with their respective stories.
A new challenge theme is posted each month. One challenge will take six weeks - four weeks for authors to write and send in their story and two weeks for voters to read and decide on their top three. Voting is done by email. At the end of the voting period, the winners are announced and it is revealed which author wrote which story.
When the challenge had its debut in 2005, it was tied to the Mellon Chronicles up to the point that the challenge entries were posted on the MC-website. It soon became apparent that maintaining the challenge on a hand-coded archive would take a lot of work. Therefore, in March 2005 Teitho migrated to its own webspace, to make updating easier. Teitho was eventually automated, running on a modified version of PHP Nuke, which was provided by Buffy Fanfiction Archive, and currently runs on ProBoards.
The moderators over the years are as follows:
Aragornwriter January 2005 - August 2005
Alina August 2005 - March 2008
Michelle August 2005 - February 2010
Valante February 2010 - June 2011
Marethiel February 2010 - August 2011
Nautika February 2010 - April 2013
StarLight February 2010 - February 2014
Mirach July 2011 - Present
Karri January 2018 - July 2019
Carawyn January 2018 - Present
Sian22 January 2018 - Present
Lotrfan January 2018 - PresentAbout Teitho, Tumblr, accessed 28 December 2023.
In an attempt to further promote the challenge and to list all stories (at least those posted on ff.net, MP brennan founded the community All Things Teitho in January 2009. To cover stories that are posted to other archives, Teitho also has its own social bookmarking account since February 2009: Teitho@Jumptags.
Authors do not need to subscribe or join anywhere and entries are sent by email. Announcements were once posted to the Yahoo! Group Owners of Aragorn Angst; Teitho has since migrated to post announcements on Tumblr.
== References ==
Category:Fiction Writing
Category:Archives
Category:Lord of the Rings Archives
Category:Gen Fandom