That's right! The annual FimFiction holiday story-exchange tradition of Jinglemas is back and better than ever!

1. If you are interested in joining our Secret Santa collab, please PM me, Shakespearicles and tell me that you want to join.

Be sure to include one (or two) characters you’d like to see in your story. If you would like to have other short notes (as in, please no romance, or please a comedy) include that as well in your request. These little notes will ultimately be optional, but will still be forwarded to your Secret Santa for consideration.

For example: "I want to have Twilight and Fluttershy in it. It would be nice if it was an EQG comedy, but not a shipfic."

[Note]: Characters can be from MLP:FIM, Equestria Girls, G5, the MLP Movies, or comics. Though more obscure characters may need additional explanation. OCs are not restricted, but are also not encouraged unless they are widely known, (like FlufflePuff).

2. People who wish to participate have until November 24th, 11:59 PM EST, to send me a PM and ask to join.

3. On November 25th, everyone’s names will be collected, shuffled and redistributed. Each of you will receive a PM stating what ponies your Secret Santa recipient would like to see in your story, as well as who your recipient is!

4. Do NOT reach out to who you are assigned! It's a Secret Santa event! It'll spoil the surprise :)

5. Try to keep the word count between 1k and 5k words. 5k words is a soft limit to keep your scope manageable. Stories should be one-shots only. If you want to extend it to multi-chapter stories, I recommend making sure that your story stands alone as-is for the Secret Santa, and then go back and add chapters onto it after everyone's shared their gifts with each other.

6. Please keep your fics at a E or a T rating. Similarly, please use the [Gore] and [Sex] tags sparingly on T-rated stories.

- The character(s) the recipient chose is/are the character(s) they want to see in the story. The stories don’t need to be exclusively about them, but they should nevertheless be significant. Please don’t throw out one or two cursory references to the character(s) and then focus the story entirely on somepony else - it’s a pretty thoughtless way of saying that you don’t really care about what your recipient wants. On that note, we encourage for those who wish to join to refrain from asking for stories about OC's, and stick to characters from the show.

- Unless you can think of a creative or original way of telling a holiday story, please try not to use mostly human characters, crossover stories or HiE/Displaced stories. Non-pony content isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and we’d like to keep things accessible for everyone. That said, if you have a fun idea that involves the Hearth’s Warming spirit and the ponies in your letter, go for it! Also, if your recipient specifically asks for human characters and/or Anon, assume that writing about humans and/or human-related things is okay.

- Similarly, EQG characters might not be everyone’s cup of tea. If you can find a creative and fun way to tell stories based on EQG, or if your recipient specifically asks for EQG characters, go for it! Otherwise, it might be best to set things in or around Equestria itself.

- To help us all get into the spirit of things, the stories should be set around or focused on Hearth’s Warming, Hearth’s Warming Eve or a similar point in the year. It doesn’t have to be the exclusive focus of the story, but it’d be a bit out of the holiday spirit to write a story set in the middle of the summer. It doesn’t necessarily have to be snowy out, though - if you want to write a holiday story in the tropics or under the sea, more power to you!

7. Include the word “stocking” somewhere in the first PM you send to me - it tells me that you’ve read through the rules up to this point, which helps put me at ease about your story’s content (and whether or not it follows the guidelines from the previous post. )

8. To fully abide by site guidelines, authors are going to be assigned into "Pods" of author groups. Meaning, that Writer A will write for B and so on until Writer E writes for Writer A. Then, In small groups, the authors will publish their "Pods" of stories on a given day. That means, when someone writes their story, they should be giving AND receiving their gift story on the same day. We will be posting in Pods so that we don't overwhelm site staff, and give each story a chance at the Feature Box Algorithm.

* 9. Pods will start posting their stories on December 22nd, and then continue posting in groups until all stories are posted.

IMPORTANT!: If you have never published a story before, or are not able to use Auto-Approval, be sure to submit your story a day or two early as the story approval queue can take hours to days when busy. If you have submitted your story but it hasn't been approved by the due date/time, please PM me to let me know!

LAST BUT NOT LEAST!!!!! Please include this in your story's long description.

Written for [Name] for Jinglemas 2023

If for ANY reason, you need to drop out of the event, if something comes up in real life, or if it's just plain writers block, LET ME KNOW ASAP! The sooner you tell me, the better. The sooner you tell me, the more time the Breezie team will have to help write the story. The more likely it is that your recipient will get their gift on time.

If you are confident that you can finish the story, but it's going to be late, LET ME KNOW.
If it's a day late because it's still in the queue, LET ME KNOW. Communicate that with me. If you're going to be late reach out to me first. If I have to be the one to track you down because you're late, I will be very not happy.

Don't avoid me.
Don't go offline.
And absolutely DO NOT LIE TO ME.

A story that is late, or needs to get Breezied, is forgivable. But lying to me makes so much more work, worry and time crunch for not just me, but the entire Jinglemas staff. And that I do not forgive.

If you have any questions or would like to know about Breezie signup, check out our FAQ!