The Fimfic Secret Santa Jingle-Off · 8:34pm Dec 6th, 2015
Hey guys, how's it going? It's Jinglemas, so let's spread some holiday cheer by jingling our jangles with the magic of ponyfics. I'm talking about a big secret santa gift exchange, where everyone writes a short fic for a random recipient and receives a short fic of their own from someone else, just as the Jinglemas prophecy foretold. It'll be fun and also probably cool.
and hopefully knighty won't steal it this time
So here's how it's going to go down:
1. Everyone who wants to take part signs up by PMing me with their favorite pony + a back-up second favorite. Also please title your sign-up PM with "I'M SANTACUS" so I know you're Santacus. The deadline for signing up will CST midnight on Tuesday, so please try to sign up by Tuesday night.
2. I'll send you back your random gift recipient and what their favorite ponies were. This is when you'll know you can start writing.
3. The guidelines for your fic gift are pretty simple:
-The theme here is The Spirit of Christmas/Jinglemas. Note how that's not a prompt. You don't have to write a fic specifically about the spirit of Jinglemas. The goal is more for you to pick something that you feel embodies the spirit of Jinglemas, like family, generosity, peace on Earth, goodwill toward all, or something like that, and try to focus your story on that. Also try to incorporate your random gift recipient's favorite pony somehow. If you can't make that work, try their back-up favorite. If you REALLY can't make either of them work, you can also just pick whatever, but you'll have to live with the knowledge that you're a bad Santa.
-I guess it goes without saying that your fic should contain some basic courtesy for your recipient. Try not to give them anything that's obviously outside their comfort zone with respect to rating, crossovers, or humans.
-Wordwise, try to shoot for something around 1,000 words minimum. You can go over that if you really want to, but try to shoot for a thousand as your baseline minimum. It's a Jinglemas gift, so it'd be kind of nice if the person you're gifting a fic to gets more than a couple paragraphs.
-As a final and totally optional consideration, try and look at the kind of stuff your random gift recipient enjoys. If they enjoy a lot of fuzzy slice of life fics, maybe consider doing one of those. If they're all over ridiculous comedies, consider putting some gags in your giftfic. If you don't want to do this, you absolutely don't have to, but as part of the Spirit of Jinglemas a personal touch would be cool.
4. Send me a link to your fic when you're done. Also if you want you can include a short blurb to wish your random gift recipient a merry Jinglemas and/or explain some of your thoughts behind the fic you put together for them.
5. I'll put everything together as a big Secret Santa compilation under a Secret Santa alt, which I'll announce when I've made it. That way everyone will be able to unwrap their anonymously given gifts all at the same time. You can break anonymity sometime after posting if you really want to, but you don't have to if you don't want to. I'd like to set a tentative deadline for finishing the whole thing by the end of December (hopefully three weeks would be enough for everyone to write at least a thousand words), so if we can all get our fics in by CST midnight on Thursday December 31st that'd be pretty cool. If it's not enough time for people, I'll push it back some, but it'd be cool if we could wrap this up as close to the actual month of Jinglemas as possible.
6. As a final note, please don't enter if:
-You don't feel at least somewhat confident in your ability to give a gift. I get that some people have wacky schedules that they don't entirely have control over, but if you don't feel like you could put together a thousand words or so by the end of December or like the first week of January at the latest, it's probably best to bow out for the sake of everyone else.
-You can't live with the idea that you might not get a gift or get a gift that isn't that great. The Secret Santa thing is ultimately supposed to be more about giving than receiving, so please try to be understanding that your Santa either may not come through due to extenuating circumstances/may not be as great an author as you'd expect. If you're honestly not okay with that risk, I don't know how else to warn you ahead of time, here's your warning.
I think that's everything? Lemme know if I missed anything and I'll edit it in. I'll answer any questions in the comments and stuff. Merry Jinglemas guys!
I...kinda wanna do this...hmmm
L-Lewd!
PM sent.
Not that you'd know, given, you know, the whole Santacus thing.
I'd do it if I wasn't such a procrastinator.
Even I should be able to manage 1000 words in three weeks
Dooted you my PM :3
3598758
You can do a nonpony MLP character if you want, but if you put one of those as your favorite, it'd probably be a good courtesy to whoever your secret santa might be to put a regular pony character as your backup favorite.
Is getting an editor to fix one's issues with writing kosher? You know, considering the whole secret santa being secret. I would happily take part in this but I would prefer to deliver something at least a bit polished.
This is interesting.
I have one quick question: are we allowed to rehash a classic Christmas story as our gift? Obviously not copy it directly, but some sort of rehash of it involving ponies?
Sent mine in.
I WOULD do this, if someone called Mr.Motivation was a friend pf mine.
Question, do we wall of text a PM to you with the story, or do we make it an actual FIMfic story?Or I could just read the answer in the other blog...