Olly Olly Oxen!

[aerye.livejournal.com]

Final reminder: dS Seekrit Santa sign-up closes tonight at midnight! Rules here!

More Than Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About dS Seekrit Santa

[aerye.livejournal.com]

Assignments will go out on Monday. In the meantime, some info about how assignments will be made, how they will be communicated to you, and how to proceed once you receive yours:

You will each receive an email from me by midnight on Monday. In the email I will identify your story recipient, and will give you verbatim the information they provided to me about the kind of story they want.

Your Assignment

For the most part, I will make assignments based on articulated first preferences (when preferences were given). That is, I will try to match your first preference on the kind of story you wanted to write with someone else's first preference on the kind of story they wanted to receive. HOWEVER, you are not required to write stories based on stated first preferences: the only requirement is that the story fit one of the recipient's stated requests, and that the story not contain any material specifically vetoed by the recipient. Given that, you are standing in for Santa--try to make the story one the recipient will enjoy receiving!

You are getting instructions from the recipient verbatim: I will simply cut and paste the instructions I received into the email to you. If you are confused by anything the recipient has requested, DO NOT CONTACT THEM DIRECTLY TO RESOLVE THE CONFUSION. This would obviously utterly defeat the seekrit part of this exercise. Email any questions you have to me, and I will communicate with the recipient and try to get the information you want.

It's a Seekrit

For the same reason, please refrain from posting details about your assignment in your livejournal or any other public place. Pairings in particular should not be identified, unless the pairing is Fraser/Kowalski, in which case the field is heavily populated enough to prevent anyone from figuring out anything specific.

Creative whining is always allowed, of course, provided you don't give anything away. ::g::

You may be recognizable to your Seekrit Santa by the name you used in your email to me but there are a handful of you that aren't so easily traced to a web site or live journal. In the interests of producing a story that will most closely match your every desire, your Seekrit Santa may want to do a drive by on your livejournal to get a sense of what you are like.

This is not a requirement; however, if you want to share your name and live journal for purposes of helping your Seekrit Santa get to know what you like, please post your identity in the comments.

I Before E, Except After C

The dS Seekrit Santa encourages betas; however, it's understandable that some folks may have difficulty with this since their regular betas are also participating.

If you are not participating in dS Seekrit Santa and would like to offer up your services as a beta, please reply here so that folks know who you are and where to find you.

Deadlines and Formatting

Deadline for stories is midnight on December 19th. At that time, if you don't deliver your story, and the story written for you is easily substituted for the story you failed to deliver, I will feel absolutely no guilt in making that substitution. None. Zip. Nada. I'm a meanie. Ask anyone who knows me.

If a substitution cannot be made, I will put out a call for pinch-hitters. We didn't need any last year; I'm going to cross my fingers that we don't need to go that route this year either.

Stories should be delivered to me appropriately coded for a livejournal entry: html or rich text. I haven't figured out all of the ins and outs of this yet, because we have more players this year--more than the total number of friends groups allowed by livejournal--but I'll figure something out by the 19th so that once I receive and post your story, I will be able to make it accessible to you and only you for a final look before the reveal at midnight on the 24th.

Identities will be seekrit for a week--on New Year's Eve, I'll attach names to stories.

That's it for now. Any questions, please ask. Suggestions are always welcome!