It’s an exciting time here at EF, as forty-five members have signed up to take part in this year’s Secret Santa event––and that’s not including the people who didn’t officially sign up but put themselves forward as rescue writers and artists anyway.

Participants must post their fics (or artwork, if applicable) between 12:00 am site time on December 1st and 11:59 pm on December 31st. If something goes awry and you cannot meet the deadline, please contact us! We understand life happens, but we don’t want anyone to end up giftless. Letting us know if your muse abandons you/cat eats your laptop/garden gnome blows up and takes your house with it means we can avail upon our aforementioned rescue writers and artists. 

REMINDER: If you fail to hand over your gift by the deadline, you will be ineligible to take part in Secret Santa next year. Or possibly face a lifetime ban from this event if you not only do this, but also don’t reach out to the Mod Team to tell us what’s up.

Members are welcome to make and upload their own fic banners or commission another member to make a banner for them, as usual, but there is also a default gift fic banner (linked here) if you want to use it. If you use the default banner, please credit MillennialCryBaby as the banner artist. If you're including a custom banner with your fic, we request you add "Designed for the Elysian Fields 2023 Secret Santa Event" somewhere legible on it.

Reminder: only members participating by writing a fic or creating artwork will get an event award for Secret Santa. There are no shinies for betas, commenters, or banner artists.

Once it comes time to post your fic, you’ll be able to tick a box that will appear on the submission page, like so:

Please state clearly who your gift fic is for in either your story summary or story notes. You may also like to add the prompts you are meeting in your story end notes, though this is optional.

We recommend you reach out to your giftee via the EF PM system once you have posted to make sure they don’t accidentally miss it. That would be such a shame after all your hard work!

Giftees, we shouldn’t need to say this, but it is good etiquette to respond to your gifter to let them know you’ve seen and appreciate all their efforts.

Here is a screenshot of a sample fic showing the icon that will appear beside your fic, once posted, to indicate its status as part of the event:

Finally, here is the gorgeous participant award for this year:

Any issues or questions, please email EllieRose101 at elysianfieldsarchive@gmail.com