Elysian Fields Archive is now a 501(c)(7) organization.

This year, Elysian Fields Archive applied for status as a 501(c)(7) organization. We’re pleased to announce that as of October 21, we are officially registered as a not-for-profit. 

Why now?

In 2021, the site administrators received word that owing to changing tax codes, any donations received by Elysian Fields would be reported to the United States government as earned income by the person whose name and identifying information were associated with our PayPal account. This would put that admin at a severe disadvantage and require them to pay taxes on money that belonged to the archive as though it had gone into their personal bank account.

One of the reasons we suspended donations in 2022 was to avoid any of the administrators being taxed for donations that went to support the archive. Admittedly, it took longer than we thought it would to get our ducks in a row—if you remember, last year was one of change and challenges. Several planned behind-the-scenes initiatives were placed on hold as we settled. Earlier this year, we returned to this initiative as the most important, and officially dove into the paperwork and legalese of applying for not-for-profit status.

What is a 501(c)(7)?

A 501(c)(7) is a nonprofit social club organized for “pleasure, recreation, and other similar purposes.” We do differ from most traditional 501(c)(7) organizations in several ways, the key factor being that we do not (and will never) require annual dues by members, nor is donation to the organization in any way compulsory. Elysian Fields only began accepting donations after multiple members made it clear that they wanted to contribute to the site. We are enormously thankful for donations but do not expect them.

Are donations to Elysian Fields tax-deductible now?

Unfortunately, no. Under IRC Section 107(C)(2), any donations made to Elysian Fields do not qualify as tax deductible. We are a recreational group rather than a charitable organization.

But I can donate if I want to?

Absolutely.

Anything else?

Not at this time, but if we learn something, we’ll let you know.

We would like to thank all the members who have donated over the years for your support and assistance in keeping our wonderful community going. And all of our current members for being part of the reason we love spending time here.

And while we have nothing else right now on our new not-for-profit status, we are extremely pleased to announce that for the first time in our 17-year history, Elysian Fields has an official logo. We're still exploring ways to incorporate the logo on the site itself, as well as other applications, but if you follow us on our various social media platforms, you're sure to see it. It was designed for us by the endlessly talented bewildered. These are just a few of the variations.

It's certainly been an exciting anniversary month!

Somehow, September is almost gone and our next event is right around the corner. If you missed the announcement, you can find it linked here. 

Before I get too far into fine details, though, I want to acknowledge that the site has undergone some teething pains due to having switched web hosts, resulting in limited access for some folks. With the exception of email, the Mod Team believes the issues are now largely resolved. Please see the post linked here for more information, and if you still are experiencing any issues, you can report them or any error messages you have to us at elysianfieldsarchive@gmail.com.

Now, without further ado, here are the deets for the event itself: 

• Kick-off is at 12:00 am site time on the 1st. (Site time can always be found under the Shoutbox on our homepage.)
• Written submissions must meet a minimum word count of 100 and must include or address a truce in some fashion (if you’re unsure if you’ve done enough to satisfy this requirement, please ask a mod).
• Your first chapter needs to be posted during October––no earlier, no later––but that does not mean you need to have the entire thing finished and uploaded by month’s end. 
• One-shot fics are of course acceptable, as are artwork-only and multimedia works. 
• There is no word count minimum for artwork-only or multimedia pieces, and no upper limit on any works beyond the site limitation of one-shots being under 15k. (Anything over 15k needs to be posted as multiple chapters, therefore making it no longer a one-shot by definition.) 
• You can earn the artist award for creating a banner for any work submitted for the event and/or posting a work with artwork or multimedia elements.
• To earn the commenter award, you must leave at least 17 comments containing at least 17 words (because it’s our 17th anniversary). The comments can be on any fic or artwork across the EF site (comments on news posts don’t count). 

At the start of the event, you will see a tickbox appear when adding a new story. This is to indicate your story is part of the event, to make sure it appears in the official list of event fics, and so it can be featured alongside the others throughout the month.  It looks like so:

Additionally, when you’ve ticked that box, a white flag icon will appear beside your story, as depicted in the example here:

Note: while sequels (or indeed prequels, or companion stories) to existing fics and artwork are eligible for this event, it’s important that submissions are new works, as in not previously shared elsewhere already. 

Once you’ve written and shared your new fic to EF, you can share it on any other site you wish. We do not require exclusivity. 

The dimensions for banners are the same as they’ve always been, as outlined on our FAQ page. All we ask is that you add a small line of text stating “Designed for the 2023 Elysian Fields Truce Challenge.”

Please, please (we cannot stress this enough!) credit your beta(s) and/or banner artist by listing their Elysian Fields username in the story notes. If you have made your own banner, include something along the lines of 'Banner by me' so you get credit for it. If you do not list your credits, we can’t issue awards. The mod team will not be chasing down this information.

Artwork-only and mixed media submissions should include the Artwork category, but please do not tick the ‘artwork-only’ box for event works, as site coding would prevent the work showing as part of the event. If you forget, or accidentally tick the artwork box, contact the Mod Team and we can resolve this. 

The awards, lovingly designed by DeathTheKat, are as pictured at the top of this news post and there is a custom site skin for this event also designed by DeathTheKat which will be the default during the entire month of October.

Any questions, comment below!

Users receiving MySQL errors: until we can get the kinks worked out, you might try accessing the site via a proxy server, such as https://us2.proxysite.com/. Some members have found that to be a serviceable workaround that restores the ability to read and comment. This is a temporary fix, not a permanent solution. 

We know that the site is still reporting MySQL errors for some users and have been in communication with our new host to discuss causes and troubleshoot solutions. While it is frustrating that so many members are having accessibility issues, we are very impressed with the level of service and care we’ve received from the new host. Once everything is working for everyone, we anticipate a much smoother EF experience. 

Until then, we do encourage users to continue sending us error messages. So far, all the error messages have been the same, but we want to know ALL errors to make note of any variation. 

What we can tell you right now is the new DNS records haven't fully finished propagating in all regions, and we have some ideas on tweaks we can make on the back end that'll restore functionality to all users. 

Please be assured we are working on it, and we won't stop working on it until it's back for everyone. 

Thank you for your patience and understanding!

Hello EF,

Over the last couple of years, you’ve heard us reference issues we have with our current website host more than once. Well, we decided to do something about it. We’re in the process of changing hosts; in fact, our assets are currently being migrated to the new hosting platform. Our new host was chosen after a careful audit of available alternatives that started in July when the site was inaccessible and culminated in our decision to switch providers, well, now.

Once the migration is complete, Elysian Fields will need to update our domain information so that everything is pointed at the right place and fully functional. There might be temporary downtimes before the end of the month, but we’ll do our best to mitigate the effects by initiating these changes during times when the site is less active. That said, this is a new thing for all of your Mods, so please be patient. If all goes well, you won’t notice a thing. If you do notice something, that’s probably the reason, but don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you have an issue.

You can reach us:

• Via Email
• Via Discord (restricted to EF members)
• Via Twitter
• Via Instagram
• Via Facebook

Please let us know if you have any questions.

When the idea of an event focused around drabbles was first discussed, some members were skeptical. There was a little uncertainty about how it would work, and even more uncertainty if anyone would like it at all. So we asked you guys, and while you let us know that you didn’t want to lose Mystery Month forever, you also said you’d give this new event a shot.

Well, guys… it’s fair to say you did a bit more than that.

For this brand new event that no one was quite sure about, we had 64 writers participate who earned themselves a bronze award. 53 of those writers also earned silver awards, 23 earned gold awards, AND we had 6 super enthusiastic members who went ahead and completed a triple blackout, writing a drabble for every single prompt!

Big round of applause for those six: Amina, BewitchedXx, cawthraven, Julikobold, Jws1993, and MaggieLaFey!

In total, an incredible 513,309 words were written during this event, across 143 stories consisting of 1,593 total drabbles (yes, you read that number right).

But of course that is not all! 41 artists* and 37 beta readers took part. Meanwhile, 470 members left a combined 10,628 comments and 21,768 likes during the event, with 273 of those members leaving 8,184 comments and 15,025 likes on event-qualifying stories, and 66 of those members earning a commenter award.

(*Banner artists and participants who made artwork-only or mixed media works.)

While we’re on the topic of commenters, our very own magnus374 left a whopping total of 1,627 comments of five or more words during the 31 days of July. (He also broke 30,000 total comments on the site during the month of July!) And so, in his honor, we have made a brand new, ‘Epic Commenter’ award––pictured here:

Going forward, you can earn this award by following Magnus’s amazing example and leaving a minimum of 1,000 comments in a single month. (Anyone who would have achieved this in the past, had it existed before now, will be retroactively awarded the epic commenter badge.)

Many, many thanks to everyone who took part, in whichever way you contributed. All participating authors, betas, artists, and commenters should now have the relevant awards on their profiles. If you seem to be missing one, or anything else seems not quite right, please drop us a line at elysianfieldsarchive@gmail.com.

If you’ve yet to check out any of the brand new drabbles, you can FIND THEM ALL HERE

Hello EF,

Finally, some news that is not related to the site acting wonky but rather to inform you that the Mods have listened to concerns from the membership and decided to add a couple of fic warnings that, effective immediately, will be mandatory on new content published on the site.

These warnings are as follows:

• Depictions of Bigotry: contains characters making prejudicial statements and/or offensive slurs regarding race, gender, ability, orientation, religion, or class, including incidentally. (Not to be confused with authors making such remarks.) Authors are asked to use their discretion here as to what qualifies as bigotry, as a full explanation on where we're drawing lines could quickly become a six-page essay. If you have any questions on a specific fic, you can contact the mods— we are happy to consult. Please be aware that if you do not use the warning and it comes to Mod attention, we reserve the right to reach out and address the situation.
• Incest: contains depictions of a romantic and/or sexual relationship between family members, whether related by blood or marriage. If the latter, situations in which the characters in question were raised as and/or regarded each other as family prior to their romantic and/or sexual involvement.

Now, on the Depictions of Bigotry, we spent a lot of time (really, a LOT of time) trying to come up with the appropriate definition only to realize, well, there isn’t one. We’re a fandom for an old show, and as such, problematic themes, characterizations, ideas, and beliefs were depicted and/or supported in the source material. The same can be said for a good amount of fic, where social and cultural norms of the day it was written have since been identified and recognized as Not Cool. Speaking personally, I’ve had several people let me know of things I wrote in old fics that I would never write today and intend to address when I edit those works. 

Point is, it's now 2023, and we are so proud to have cultivated a wonderfully diverse community that we have been told, numerous times, helps individuals in otherwise targeted communities feel heard and (hopefully) safe. The addition of this warning is a continued part of that outreach, as well as in line with our goal of empowering readers so they may confidently and safely engage with content published here.

That said, we also hope the membership understands that we do not have the resources to retroactively review all the fics published on this site to see what stories qualify for our new warnings, or ANY of the warnings that have been added since we launched in 2006, of which there are many. If you are already aware of such fics, we encourage you to let us know so we can reach out to the authors or apply the warning ourselves, if necessary. If in the future you encounter an older fic that isn’t tagged, again, let us know and we will handle it.

Just to reiterate to all EF authors, use your own discretion and reach out to us with questions. We understand that this is a very daunting, nebulous tag, which is why it took us so long to decide how to approach it, but we do think it’s essential to continue supporting the health and safety of community members. As always, if you include any warning in a fic that you would like to explain, you are encouraged to elaborate in the story notes. And rest assured, unless authors refuse to use the warnings or act with malicious intent, no one will be in trouble for neglecting to add a warning. The most you can expect from us is a private message requesting that the warning be added if we think it is warranted.

Likewise, under no circumstance should a member reach out to an author directly and confront them about depictions of bigotry (or any other warning) in their work. If there’s an issue or concern, let the Mod team know. That’s one of the things we’re here for.

I’m sure this is going to open the floor to a lot of questions, but we truly are going to rely heavily on the definition we drafted for this tag. Really, just use your best judgment, and if you aren’t sure, ask.

You can find all information regarding rating, category, genre, and warning definitions here.

Thank you!

UPDATE: This issue appears to be resolved. Let the Mods know if you still experience trouble logging in, staying logged in, or accessing certain fics.

Hi EF,

Today has been a mixed technical bag for the archive, and while most systems seem to be normal at the moment, there is one thing we’re still working on. And that is the rather inexplicable error that redirects users reading NC-17 material back to the first chapter rather than the subsequent one.

All users experiencing this issue: please note that you can bypass the pop-up entirely by editing your site preferences and confirming at the bottom of the page that you are old enough to read NC-17 material. Those pop-ups will go away forever.

In the meantime, we appreciate your patience and understanding. We’d also like to remind you to please send technical questions to ssolace@gmail.com as you encounter them. The Shoutbox can move quickly and isn’t the most reliable place for technical questions. Likewise, fic comments are not an appropriate place to report these issues and will be deleted.

Thank you!

Hey, gang! The Mod Team is so thrilled at how enthusiastic you’ve already responded to the prompts. You’ve come up with ideas and questions beyond what we could have imagined, and we want to answer a few of those questions here. 

The main thing we need to clarify is the prompts themselves:

There was a little debate about this (and individual Mods may have given differing answers at different times, so apologies) but we all came together to agree that it’s the spirit of a prompt that matters, more so than semantics and technicalities. 

What this boils down to is, if a prompt sparks your imagination, we’re now allowing more wiggle room on being liberal in execution. 

Example: The Faith and Oz squares were intended as character prompts, BUT if you instead want to go for the other definition of faith and have a character exploring a belief structure? That works. If you want to send your characters to the Land of Oz rather than throw in a randomly appearing Daniel Osbourne? That’s fine too!

And if you do decide to go for the character definition, said character does not technically need to be in the drabble, so long as they are intrinsic to it. In other words, someone could be dreaming about that character, or recalling a memory of them. If someone is just talking about them, it needs to be a smidgen more than a two-second reference. Make the mention of them significant. 

What exactly does it mean to be intrinsic or significant? If you were to take out your reference to the character, and the rest of the drabble no longer makes sense, congrats, you’ve made that character significant enough to be intrinsic to the fic working!

For the diary prompt, you could write a diary entry. It does not need to include the word diary.

In the case of the prompt about Buffy complimenting “Spike’s blue shirt,” you could take this as a reference to the blue shirt he wore that one time in Season Seven, or you could have him wear a blue shirt––any blue shirt––at any time or place, and have Buffy compliment it to count.  

For the prompts that consist of a dialogue line, there is now also some wiggle room. E.g. you could have “Oh, bugger,” said Buffy. Or “Oh,” said Buffy. “Bugger!” 

Your fic does not need to be marked as complete by the end of the event (on July 31st). Whatever award you get will depend on whichever level (bronze, silver, or gold) you’d hit by that deadline, but you are free to carry on posting after the event end.

If you're writing a story that has multiple parts/chapters, it needs to follow site rules regarding Spuffy prominence––i.e. it doesn't need to be in each individual chapter, just the fic overall. But if each drabble is self-contained, they must individually follow the Spuffy prominence rule.

If you want your drabbles to form a narrative, and you’ve picked out five prompts to go for silver, but need to add more chapters to make everything work, you can include “filler drabbles” that follow your own, self-selected prompts, in between drabbles that match event prompts. Just clearly label which is which!

Similarly, when using Wild Card prompts, please label them as such. 

Are your drabbles self-contained and not part of a narrative, but you want to post them as “chapters” of a single fic anyway? That’s fine. (Doing so actually makes it easier for us to track, as a Mod Team.)

A couple of people have asked if you can share copies of the drabble board literally showing which squares you’ve ticked off, and yes, you can. Either do this in your story notes or include the screenshot as part of your banner––but do not make it your entire banner, and keep to the recommended banner dimensions. 

That’s all of the questions we can think to answer right now, but if (when) you have more, we’ll likely come back and update this post.

We know so many of you are excited for our first-ever drabble event, since you voted for it a year ago, so here are some things you’ll need to know. (Or if this is the first time you’re hearing about our drabble event, please see our announcement post here.)

Firstly, I will draw your attention to the gorgeous banner above and the beautiful awards below, all designed by scratchmeout.

The event skin, conveniently titled “Drabblemania,” is now live. You can preview it from the homepage, like so:

To select it as your default skin, (rather than just using it temporarily) visit member preferences, set “Drabblemania” as your default and hit “Submit” at the bottom of the screen.

(Also, big hand to cawthraven who designed her very first site skin; it’s beautiful)

Awards, Drabbles, and Awards for Drabbles

As promised, there are Bronze, Silver, and Gold participant awards alongside our standard Beta, Commenter, and Artist achievements.

To win the bronze award, you must complete a single prompt––any prompt––from the official event boards, and post your work to the site during the month of July, ticking the box to indicate it’s part of the event. (More on this in a minute.)

EF defines a drabble as a work of 1,000 words or under. If you’re submitting artwork with no words, obviously don’t worry about this. If you’re submitting something with both words and pictures, the word cap applies. 

Minimum word count: 50 words. (Because if a prompt is, for example, “Spuffy get ice cream” you will need to do a little bit more than writing, “Spike and Buffy went for ice cream,” to qualify.) 

And yes, we know that sometimes the site word count will not exactly match that of Microsoft Word and/or Google Docs, so there will be a little wiggle room to account for this. 

To win silver, cross off five prompts from a single board in a line, going any direction i.e. horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. If your line goes through the ‘wild card’ square (previously called ‘free space’), you can write a drabble on a prompt of your choice or use another prompt from any of the boards to count for that square.

The three prompt boards will go live at midnight on 1st July, site time (currently GMT). You can always check what the site time is under the Shoutbox on EF’s homepage. 

To get a gold award, you must cross off all of the twenty-five prompts on a single board. Completing twenty-five prompts across all three boards is cool, and totally allowed if that’s where your muse takes you, but it won’t equal gold. 

On that note: this is supposed to be fun, so if you get inspired to write three drabbles or thirty-three, go for it. If the added challenge of trying to hit award targets reminds you too much of assignments and stresses you out, just ignore that part and enjoy whatever shinies you get when the time comes. 

You can post any time from 0:00 on July 1st to 23:59 on July 31st, during which a tick box will appear on the ‘add a new work’ page, as demonstrated in the screenshot below:

Note: if you’re submitting an artwork-only piece that is also for the event, just click the event box and not the artwork box. The way the site is set up, you can only have one ticked. If you’ve accidentally ticked the wrong one and need the Mod Team to change it, reach out and we can do that for you. 

Works that are part of the event will all appear together on the page linked here, and they will also get a little quill icon appearing beside the title, as shown in the example here: 

Also, we have gotten a few questions about whether event-specific content can be posted in other spaces over the duration of the event. At Elysian Fields, the answer is always YES. It's your work and your decision about what you want to do with it. You will not be penalized for sharing far and wide.

Finally, for the sake of the Mods issuing awards, please state which prompt you’re answering in your chapter notes. And please, please, please credit your betas and/or banner artists in your story notes so they get credit for the event. 

If you have any questions, let us know!

*** 

Edited to Add: For previous events, you had to write fifteen comments of at least fifteen words each to win the commenter award, but for this event––because the focus is on having smaller things in greater amounts––the requirement is twenty-five comments of at least five words. 

What’s five-by-five and lots of fun? That’s right, our next event! 

Way back at the end of July last year, when we were wrapping up Mystery Month 2022, we asked you all to vote on whether to keep Mystery Month as an annual thing or switch it out for a drabble event. What the majority of you did instead was pick a third option, in which we’d alternate between a drabble event and Mystery Month each year. 

So, Mystery Month will be returning for July 2024, but for July 2023 we are so excited to bring Drabblemania to life! We’ve workshopped the specifics a little since the first announcement, and can now reveal the plan as such: 

The Mod team is going to take unused story prompts that the membership submitted for Mystery Month last year, and create three prompt boards. Imagine Bingo boards with five squares across the top and five down, making twenty-five squares in total (where the middle one is a free space). 

To take part, you must write a fic (or create some Spuffy fan art) based on at least one of the prompts. Drabbles are usually defined as stories of 100 words or less, but here at Elysian Fields, they need to be under 1,000 words to qualify. 

If you write one drabble, you get a bronze award. If you’re able to mark off a line of five prompts (in any direction), you get a silver award, and if you’re able to blackout an entire prompt board, you win gold. We’re not planning a platinum award for completing all three prompt boards, but if someone actually manages to do it, we’ll make sure you get the recognition you deserve. 

Drabbles can be entirely self-contained, or interconnected. As such, you can post the drabbles written for this event as one shots or as a multi-chaptered fic, so long as those “chapters” are individual drabbles that are under the 1,000 word limit. 

There will of course also be awards for commenters, artists, and betas. 

Any questions, let us know! 

We have been working on a number of site updates and improvements behind the scenes, but the one I’m most excited about is that when you download an ePub of a story that has images in it, the images are now included in the ePub. This means you can download artwork submissions, comics, and mixed media stories and not lose any of the gorgeous images our artists create and share with us. For authors/artists, please note that art must be in the body of the chapter; anything in the summary, story notes, chapter notes, or end notes will not be pulled into the file.

To ensure ePubs with images work correctly, we also added a default cover image that will be included with each ePub download. HappyWhenItRains was kind enough to create a cover for us that we hope you will enjoy as much as we do! Here is a preview.

In the future, we’re hoping to incorporate the ability to add your own cover image to your story, so watch out for more improvements! Please let us know if you’re having any issues with downloading ePubs at ssolace@gmail.com

Also, we do have a known issue that we are working on resolving related to certain characters that our site considers to be “special characters,” though some of them seem bog-standard to us. Until we are able to implement a fix, if your story title, summary, or chapter titles include these special characters, then ePub files may not open after a reader downloads them. The main culprits seem to be “smart quotation marks”, which are when Word or Google Docs see you typed a single or double quotation mark and make it curl in toward the words. We are attempting to write code that will automate this, but in the meantime, you will need to either re-type the quotation mark in the field (on desktop) or copy/paste in a straight single or double quotation mark from elsewhere (on mobile). As I mentioned, we are working to correct this but do not yet have an estimate on when the fix will be available. If you download an ePub and it won’t open (especially if you get an error message about a formatting issue), please reach out to the mods and we can work with the author or make the edit ourselves. We are also available to help authors troubleshoot their own fics should they need help.

Folks, we did it again!

April Challenge Month is over for another year, and I’m pleased to say y’all brought your A-game. 

During the event, the site saw the addition of 56 challenge fics, made up of 140 chapters, consisting of 384,594 words, and written by 48 authors.

28 artists and 28 betas got an award, while 54 members completed the commenter challenge, with 1,591 comments left on event stories during April, not to mention 2,679 likes!

Many thanks to everyone who took part, as always. 

All awards are now issued, but if you seem to be missing one, or anything else seems not quite right, please drop us a line at ssolace@gmail.com

If you have yet to check out any of the brand new challenge fics, you can FIND THEM ALL HERE. 

Until next time, happy reading!

Hi EF,

We have changed the event icon set for April Challenge Month from a puzzle piece to an umbrella, following member feedback. To the Mods’ collective embarrassment, we overlooked the unfortunate fact that puzzle pieces have a historically problematic relationship/association with autism.

As administrators of the site, we are committed to ensuring that our space here is safe and welcoming to all individuals. Discomfort of any kind should not be a part of the EF experience. We are very grateful to the member who stepped forward as well as the members who seconded these concerns for helping us correct our oversight.

Your April Challenge Event fics will be marked with this icon:

And a reminder to authors and artists: Please make sure that ‘Written for the Elysian Fields April Challenge’ is on your fic banner! This was added to our news post in an edit earlier this week but not included in the original publication.

Thank you!

We promised a new event announcement, and I’m here to deliver! 

For the month of April, your task––should you choose to accept it––is to respond to challenges issued to our site by your fellow members (see here). You don’t have to complete the fic (or art) by the end of the month, just have posted the first installment between midnight on April 1st and 23.59 on April 30th (site time). 

And you can respond to as many challenges as you want––so long as you didn’t issue them yourself! 

If you find a challenge that mostly speaks to you but you would like to change an element of, it is recommended that you contact the person that issued said challenge and ask for their permission/blessing.

Any other questions or queries, please comment below or contact one of the Mod Team directly via private message. Further details, including what the awards will look like, will be posted closer to the time.

It’s fair to say, our very first micro-event has been a huge success! 

In the space of forty-eight hours, 32 works (stories and/or art) were shared by 27 participants. That’s a massive 175,143 words!

Well done, all! Everyone should have participant awards now on their profile, but if you discover any issues, get in touch. 

Not caught up on the wealth of satisfying Spuffy yet? You can find them all linked here.