Hello everyone,
The moderators of Elysian Fields would like to thank and congratulate everyone who participated in the 2019 Challenge Month. Authors, artists, betas, commenters, and lurkers – you all play an important role in making our archive the successful and wonderful place it is.
The 2019 Challenge Month has brought us 44 brand new fic. Yes, you read that number correctly, 44 brand new fic. That's huge! For anyone who has yet to read the wonderful contributions created by the talented authors on our site, you can FIND THEM ALL HERE. You’re welcome. 
April Challenge Month stats:
(For challenge fic only, and accurate at the time of this news item being posted)
- New fic – 44
- Chapters added – 110
- Words added – 302,780
- Banners created – 22
- Comments received – 2,048
- Likes received – 2,994
To the artists of our community, thank you for gracing our site with your pretties.
To the betas, thank you for your help and comments to the authors you work with.
To the commenters, who leave the authors feedback—thank you for showing your appreciation.
And the to the participating authors, thank you for giving us all a list of future reading material. I can’t wait to dive into the fic I’ve yet to read.
If you participated during challenge month as an author, commenter, artist, or beta, check out the awards section on your member profiles – you should see some graphics waiting for you. If we missed you by mistake, please shoot a PM to one of the mods. For anyone who has been using the April skin (it's also been the site default over the last month) it is being retired, but only until next year when we hope to do this all over again.
Site events are awesome, and the challenges page has lots of ideas to spark inspiration. Just because this event has concluded, doesn’t mean the fic have to. Don't know if you've seen it yet, but I’m intrigued by a new challenge set by DarkVoid116 called 20,000 Members (click on the bolded text to see it), which was inspired by the membership milestone the archive reached this week.
Thank you again to everyone who participated in Challenge Month, we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.
And as always, happy reading!
--Amy on May 01, 2019 10:19pm 11 Comments
WOW!!
I was too preoccupied to participate much, but what an absolutely fabulous event! I'm so glad to hear you plan to repeat it next year. The challenges are a great (largely untapped) resource, and I love that all kinds of site users had opportunities to participate in different ways.
I've been wondering: the betas of upcoming "Exquisite Cortados" chapters will qualify for award banners, right? Since the authors of those chapters do?
Good question.
As the current EC challenge snuck in under the posting wire for the month. EC is unique, in that it written and 100% completed prior to posting, so participating authors/betas were part of the challenge even though their chapters might not yet be live. With this thinking, yes I think that would mean betas of the yet to be posted EC chapters are eligible for challenge month awards.
We can manually add them in, the authors just need to let us know (via chapter notes or a PM) who their beta was so we can add the awards in.
@amy @thenewbuzwuzz - EC betas have already been counted and awarded :)
Thanks to everyone and the mods for a fab challenge month :)
I love my award! This has been a particularly eventful challenge month. The authors really kicked it up a notch.
Oh yay, I'm excited that the April challenge month will repeat next year!!
@OffYourBird, fantastic, thank you <3
@OffYouBird - you’re a legend. 
There was an April Skin? I had no idea.
