With the holidays officially behind us, we have retired the Secret Santa skin as the site default (though it’s still available for selection) and exchanged it for a brand-new skin, entitled fierce, based on the amazing artwork provided by OffYourBird. To set it to your default, visit Account Info > Profiles and Preferences > Edit Preferences.
We held four site events—Challenge Month in April, Mystery Month in July, Called Challenge in October, and our second-ever Secret Santa Fic Exchange in December. The response was overwhelming, as the numbers will show.
In the second year of recognizing the milestone that is Completed Fics, we had 124 authors complete a total of 360 fics; that’s 14 more authors and 28 more fics than last year. Our goal in 2020 was to award the FIC COMPLETE award to more authors in 2021, and thanks to the efforts of our amazing authorship, we did just that.
All authors who completed a fic (one-shots count!) in 2021 have been issued this award:
The other award seeing its second year is the Challenge Complete Award. This was awarded to site members who completed any site event challenge in 2021 (that is, the challenge events that are overseen by the EF mods and come with spiffy thematic skins and stuff). The exception here being Secret Santa, which had its own participant recognition that everyone who completed their Secret Santa assignments should have in their profile.
P.S. If you haven't read the fics yet, you can find them all on their site event page, which is also accessible by going to Browse >> Site Events >> 2021 Secret Santa.
We also have issued awards to our most prolific members. These are chosen by the numbers.
In 2021, we added:
- 11,462,167 words
- 466 stories
- 2,518 chapters
- 1,726 new members
- 105,541 new likes
- 43,159 new comments to the archive (comprising 3,143,077 words)
That is a lot of content, all made possible because of you guys. Seriously, some of you wrote whole novels’ worth of comments for our authors, and we have the numbers to prove it.
Top 10 Commenters
- pfeifferpack (521,165 words)* Recipient of Most Prolific Commenter Award 2021
- swonderful (246,038 words)
- magnus374 (218,907 words)
- honeygirl51885 (131,144 words)
- talesofstories (96,712 words)
- bmerb (93,787 words)
- All4Spike (85,185 words)
- Green (76,662 words)
- The Danish Bird (75,458 words)
- Secretangel106 (67,481 words)
Top 10 Authors
- Touchstoneaf (742,923 words)* (Recipient of Most Prolific Author Award 2021)
- Holly (511,498 words)
- Passion4Spike (481,088 words)
- Dusty (475,855 words)
- Violette-Milka (385,763 words)
- Jws1993 (317,427 words)
- violettathepiratequeen (300,416 words)
- Sigyn (279,600 words)
- MissLuci (259,570 words)
- sweetprincipale (249,471 words)
If you are missing an award you should have received, please reach out to us (ssolace@gmail.com) and we’ll verify and get that corrected.
Guys, it was another rough year in the real world, and we couldn’t have made it through without you all helping make EF an extra special and bustling port in the storm. We have big things in store for 2022 and more announcements to come. Thank you so much for everything you give to our community. We know we wouldn’t be here without you.
--The Mods on January 07, 2022 03:34am 12 Comments
Well done, recognizing not just the authors, but those who take the time to leave comments.
It's always interesting to see the numbers. I seldom write long comments but the volume of comments has been enough to place me high on the list🙂
Thank you to all the mods and to all the authors, commenters, artists, and readers who make this site so awesome. It's a bright spot in an often challenging world these days.
Thank you Mods for posting all of this wonderful information! It's so great to see Spuffy Love alive and thriving 25 years later. 
OMG, can you believe "Welcome to the Hellmouth" and "The Harvest" will have aired 25 years ago on March 10?!
Thank you to everyone that makes this site so amazing! It really is a bright spot in my world!!
A big thank you to all the mods for running this site! I love living here. You keep it thriving with your engagement and enthusiasm.
a huge thank you to all the authors who keep me entertained and excited. A huge round of applause for everyone!!
This site rocks. It's interesting that so many fandoms have come and gone, but Buffy endures. EF is a huge part of why Buffy fic endures in the pixel skies. It excites me that after more than 2 decades, people are still discovering Buffy, Spuffy and the whole Buffyverse. Your hard work makes sure that it will endure.
I'm glad there are general interest fic sites like AO3, but it is so easy to get lost there. Here, I come, I know I can get my fix and I also can get to know other authors (and sometimes readers) some of whom have become my real life friends, either via emails or occasionally, more.
Thank you for being a port in a storm that has become a city on a hill.
I love you guys, especially you kick arse mods!
Blue
Thank you for everything you ladies always do for the site. You can see the results of all your hard work clear as day!
If I can just make a suggestion, I'd say that maybe the Secret Santa could include an additional encouragement from the mods to the gift receivers to make themselves heard as soon as possible when their gifts are posted, even just with a short pm if they're busy (I know I did that, exactly because I didn't want my gift giver to think I was ignoring/didn't like their story!). It's not my case because I've been EXTREMELY lucky on that, but I've heard of some who haven't heard from their gift receiver for a long time (or not yet even now), and I just think that since this is a time-sensitive event, maybe a similar attention could be given to that side of the experience. Acknowledging the gift even before sitting down to read it, if it's gonna take a while for whatever reason, you know?
@MaggieLaFey: So glad you enjoyed the exchange. The encouragement for participants to PM their recipients once the gift was posted was already sent to all participants this year as part of the event emails. However, it's not something we can enforce.
As for pre-post communications: we strictly asked participants to NOT PM their giftees before posting, because that ruins the surprise, which is a huge element of the exchange. Since there was a specific deadline, anyone participating can safely assume their gift may arrive up to that point. (And late gifts did require other communications, which were handled appropriately.)
@OffYourBird: Oh, maybe I wasn't clear. I didn't mean pre-post communication: I meant that once A has posted a gift for B, it would probably be better if B reached out to A and said something, in case B doesn't have the time to read and like/comment on the story for a few days, as a courtesy to A for their gift. Like, acknowledging it until the moment they can take the time to read it and respond.
For example, when the gift I received was posted, I also received a PM from my gift writer about it, and I answered as quickly as I could, thanking them and saying that it might take me a few days to have the time to read the story but that didn't mean I wasn't excited about their gift.
Hope that makes more sense.
@MaggieLaFey - Certainly, we encourage every recipient of a gift fic to acknowledge and thank their gifter, but as OYB said, communication of this nature isn't something we can really enforce. And given how hectic life can be around the holidays (+pandemic times; who knows when that'll end?), mandating additional to-dos could add even more stress.
It's a nice thought, though, and again, we certainly encourage gifters and giftees to let each other know their gift has been posted and the effort acknowledged/appreciated by the recipient.
Brilliant! Seeing my name on a list like this, alongside authors I've been reading since I signed up to this site is amazing!