The holiday season is in full swing here at Elysian Fields with our second Secret Santa event! To celebrate the occasion, OffYourBird created a special event banner and Holly made it into a beautiful site skin! This skin will be available from now through the end of December for everyone to enjoy. Change your skin to our holiday theme by going to Account Info > Edit Preferences > Default skin: secretsanta. (And if you’re looking for holiday merriment past Dec 31, our general Holiday skin is now available year round!)
We are pleased to announce that this year’s Secret Santa event is even bigger than the last, with 60 members participating! If you’re one of those 60, these details below are for you:
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What are the Secret Santa participation requirements again?
For those of you giving Secret Santa gifts (officially signed-up members only), you will be able to post your fics starting at 12:01am ET (site time) December 1, and will be able to post until 11:59pm ET on December 31. All fics MUST be one-shots. That is, they must be one chapter composed of 14,750 or fewer words. Rest assured, your summary, story notes, chapter notes, and end notes do not count against your word count.
When publishing your gift, be sure to mark the checkbox shown below:
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What event information do I need to include in my story?
You must include the following information in your summary or story notes: “This fic is an Elysian Fields 2021 Secret Santa gift for [giftee's name]"
It’s also recommended that you send your giftee a private message once you’ve published the fic, so they don’t miss seeing it!
Banners: If you're including a custom banner with your fic, it must have "Designed for the Elysian Fields 2021 Secret Santa" legibly added to it.
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Does a gift writer need to reveal their giftee’s preferences?
You do not! As with a standard Secret Santa, no preferences have to be mentioned publicly. However, if you want to attach your giftee's preferences to your story, please do so in your story end notes.
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How do I find the stories that are being added to the Secret Santa?
All gift fics will be merrily marked with a festive stocking icon, which looks like the example below:
Additionally, all gift fics can be found on the 2021 Secret Santa event page, and OffYourbird will be keeping a running announcement of fic gifts on the EF Facebook Discussion Page.
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I forgot… What do I do if I realize I’m not going to be able to finish my gift fic by the deadline?
The last thing we want is for any member to end up giftless. While we have done our best to ensure that members are only participating with an understanding of their commitment, we know that life happens. So, if you find that you will be unable to write a fic for your giftee, you MUST reach out to OffYourBird (via ssolace@gmail.com or PM) by December 15 so that she can contact a rescue writer.
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We’re looking forward to much merriment at Elysian Fields this coming month --- Happy Holidays from the Mods!
--The Mods on November 27, 2021 04:10pm 4 Comments
@MaggieLaFey: you got it exactly! If your fic shows a higher wordcount when posted, that's fine
Hi! Where do we grab OYB's lovely banner from? I thought I'd check ahead of time since it looks like I'll just skate in under the wire...
Oh, I found it! If anyone else is looking, it's here: https://img.nickpic.host/gTjN6F.gif
Hi! First of all, thanks for all the hard work you put into organising these beautiful events.
I do have a technical question: the limit of 14,750 words means that I have to stay under that number with my own word processor, not the EF's one... right? E.g., if my word processor says it's 14,749 words but the EF counter says it's 14,849, it's still ok, right? I assume this rule is to avoid the situation where an author's word processor counts fewer than 15k but the EF one counts more and thus doesn't allow posting the fic as a one-shot (since last year there was a lot of that). Have I got that right?
Thanks in advance!