Welcome to Week 3 of the Elysian Fields Mystery Event!

Wellness check. How are you all doing? Mystery Month is a marathon, but we hope you guys (gn) are having as much fun as we are, especially since we’re officially at the halfway point!

Reminders!

• Only ONE MORE PROMPT be released after this week.
• The fifth and final prompt is HEA/HFN.
• Your fic MUST CONCLUDE with five chapters.
• The end-notes for each chapter MUST INCLUDE the prompt(s) that were answered in the chapter and an excerpt of the prompt being fulfilled.
• Fics that do not update within the specified timeframe will be removed from the event. This means you have until 11:59 pm EDT on July 14 to add Chapter 2.

Curious to see how the prompts are being addressed? Check out the fics on our Event Page.

And without further ado, the prompts. The random number generator we used plucked a couple more from Avery and Kliomuse, and since we didn’t account for that possibility, we decided to roll with it. But two’s the limit, guys, no matter how many amazing prompts you provided.

Also, the prompt says towel and should be a towel and only a towel in your chapters, but we’re going with a strategically placed sheet for the image. Hope no one minds. 

WEEK 3 PROMPTS 

• Buffy pampers/spoils Spike/William (as suggested by LovingWilliam)
• A strategically placed towel (as suggested by Avery)
• “My brain goes ahhhh” (as suggested by Kliomuse)

POSTING WINDOW FOR CHAPTER 3

• Start: July 15 @ 12:00 am EDT
• End: July 21 @ 11:59 pm EDT

PROMPT 4 ANNOUNCED

• July 19

PROMPT 5 ANNOUNCED

• Already done! YOUR FIFTH AND FINAL PROMPT IS HEA/HFN

As always, if you have any questions, you can comment below or reach out to us at elysianfieldsarchive@gmail.com. 

Happy writing, all!

IT’S TIME! Are you ready?

We have accumulated a LOT of prompts, y’all. You were amazing and creative. The Mod team reviewed and categorized everything that was submitted! Each week, we’ll release three prompts for you to choose from. You only need to use ONE for your fic to qualify, but if you’re feeling ambitious and want to go for more than one, well, we won’t stop you.

Let the Mystery Begin!

WEEK 1 PROMPTS

• Renaissance Faire (as suggested by Inevitablethief)
• Include Mr. Trick (as suggested by JayeMaru)
• Spike listens as Buffy Vents (as suggested by a member who wishes to remain anonymous)

The game is officially afoot, Watson!

How and when do I post my story?

Starting at midnight on July 1 (site time, which is Eastern US time - it's listed under the ShoutBox), you'll see a checkbox on the page where you add a new story. 

***Please note: After July 7, the option to join the event will be removed. This is a TIMED event with strictly enforced deadlines.***

How do I find Challenge Stories?

Want to keep up with the fun? All Mystery Month fics will have a little pipe icon in the byline. Every detective needs a pipe!

You can also find all of the Mystery Month fics as they are added by visiting the Event Page.

What should my chapter include?

Aside from the prompt of the week, each chapter MUST include a line in the endnotes that identifies the prompt itself and a copy/paste section of the fic where the prompt was fulfilled.

EXAMPLE: Gone Switching by bewildered

This can be a single sentence or a paragraph, depending on the nature of the prompt and how you addressed it. Authors will have until the end of each week’s posting window to include this note. Fics that fail to include this will be removed from the event in real time, so put this at the top of your to-do list. The Mods REALLY don’t want to remove any fic from the event because that just sucks for everyone involved (and makes us feel crappy, even if you had plenty of advance notice). So do your part to make sure we don’t have to. We don’t wanna play Bad Cop (but we WILL). 

What happens if I don’t post my chapter within the time window?

All chapters must be posted within the allotted time window to qualify for the event. Fics that don’t will lose the little pipe icon and be ineligible for author awards. For the first chapter, that means between July 1 - July 7.

Anything else to keep in mind as I start writing?

Unlike other EF events, Mystery Month Fics have a HARD cap of five chapters. In addition to fulfilling each week’s prompt, all fics MUST be complete by the event’s end (August 4th, at 11:59:59 pm site time) in order to qualify for author awards and remain listed as an event fic with the icon.

We know this will be difficult for some of you, especially since you don’t know what we’re going to throw at you next week, but it’s part of the challenge. And, we hope, also part of the fun.

What about betas, sensitivity readers, and artists?

If you have people helping you complete your Mystery Fic (either through beta/sensitivity reading or banner art creation), please use EF’s credit system to mark their contribution. And seriously, they need to be recognized. Think of all the work you’re going to throw at them over the next 5 weeks. They deserve all the accolades.

Is there an event skin?

Yes. The Mystery Month skin (called “Undercover”) is now live if you want to make it your default. Scroll down to the skins on the main page or in the footer and select the one labeled “undercover” to switch. If you want to keep it, make sure you change the selection on your preferences page. And if you haven't seen it, the skin looks like this:

Spuffy has set up shop just down the road from Detective Holmes. And we know Holmes is good and all, but our money’s on Spuffy to crack the case first.

Will you be featuring regular stories while the challenge is going on?

Following the first week of the event, the area where we usually have featured stories, we're going to highlight stories written as responses to the Mystery Prompts. 

The Mystery Month challenges authors. What about the readers? Won’t you think of the readers?

Obviously, readers deserve all the love. If you write at least 15 comments in July that contain at least 5 words (for any stories here on EF, not just the challenge ones), you'll meet the requirements of the commenter challenge! You'll see a link to the comment challenge leaderboard on the homepage under the Members of the Month where the all-star commenter list is usually located.

Besides an amazing sense of pride, do we get anything for participating in the event?

Of course you do! As always, there will be awards for participating authors, artists, betas, and commenters. Please note, only authors who SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETE their fic will receive the author award. Beta and sensitivity readers, commenters, and artists will be awarded regardless of whether the fic in question was completed (they did their part, after all). So authors, if you want one of these pretties made by our good friend Trevor Carlee, on your page, get ready for a fun five weeks.

   

I’m exhausted. What was the prompt again?

YOUR FIC MUST INCLUDE ONE OF THE FOLLOWING:

• A Renaissance Faire
• Mr. Trick
• Spike listens as Buffy vents 

When will the next prompts be announced?

Prompt #2 will be announced in a new News Post on July 5 and on our EF Discord server.

That's it! Go forth and create!

Are you guys excited? We sure are! We haven’t run Mystery Month since 2022, following a community-voted decision to alternate between Mystery Month and Drabblemania for our July events. And the results were amazing. We don’t like to brag (oh, who are we kidding, we LOVE to brag!) Drabblemania 2023 was a huge success. That said, we think the community chose very wisely, because our original Mystery Month is an event like no other, and we’re excited to get back to it!

If you weren’t around in 2022, or need a refresher, here’s the crux:

For the entire month of July (with a little spill over into August), participants will create works (either text-based stories or narrative artwork) that are five chapters long. Each chapter must respond in some way to a given prompt, and the works must be complete at five chapters––no longer, no shorter––with said chapters posted within the relevant time windows (detailed below).

The prompts will be issued every week, which means you have exactly one week to write/create art and post. Is it intense? Hell yes, it’s intense. But is it fun? Considering you guys wanted to keep the event, we’ll say hell yes, it’s a lot of fun.

Your contribution can be a sequel to any existing work, but it doesn’t have to be. The only requirement, beyond what we mentioned above, is that it be brand-new, not an existing WIP, and written specifically for this event.

PROMPTS? WHAT PROMPTS?

So glad you asked!

The prompts will be provided by…*drumroll please*… You all!

In 2022, we shifted format from the EF admin-provided prompts to community-sourced. It’s more fun that way (and ensures the participating Mods don’t have the unfair advantage of knowing what the prompts are ahead of time). So you, dear EF community, will be providing the prompts that will guide the works we create.

But as we are benevolent overlords, we will provide one (and only one) prompt ahead of time. And that is the fifth and final chapter must be HEA/HFN.

HOW DOES THIS WORK?

As in 2022, you are invited (nay, encouraged!) to enter as many prompts as you like in our prompt form. These prompts can be anything – a line of dialogue, an object, a character, a color, a number, a creature feature, a situation, etc.

The only consideration we ask you to make in providing prompts is to adhere to the Spuffy wisdom of Five Words or Less for each prompt to avoid stressing out our creators. Beyond that, get as wild and creative as you like! Each week of the event, the Mods will use randomization software to pick a prompt from the list you provide us, and that prompt becomes your challenge for that week’s chapter.

Even better? We’ll save the unused prompts to source again for the Drabblemania 2025 Bingo Boards.

And yes, we do have plenty of prompts left over from 2022, but Elysian Fields has grown a lot over the last two years, and we want to provide our new members with the chance to contribute to the prompt list. It’s a great way to give EVERYONE the chance to be involved – our creators, our readers, and even our lurkers.

I ONLY HAVE A WEEK TO CREATE A WHOLE CHAPTER? BETA AND EVERYTHING?

Yes, beta and everything. 

THAT’S SCARY

We know. 

SO WHAT IF MY CHAPTER ISN’T DONE IN TIME?

This is our most stringent time-sensitive event. The “This Story is Part of the 2024 Mystery Month Event” tick box will DISAPPEAR after the first week is behind us and any works that do not update within the specified timeframe will be removed from the event.

Should you not update in time, though, don’t worry. You are welcome (read: encouraged) to continue your work at your own pace. You simply won’t be eligible for the author award and are no longer beholden to the prompts.

WHAT IF I GET TO CHAPTER 5 AND I HAVE MORE STORY LEFT?

The intent behind this event is COMPLETED WORKS. So if you get to Chapter 5 and you don’t think your work is complete, your choices are:

• Make it a series and continue it later, with your Mystery Month fic as the first complete work in that series
• Remove the work from the event and continue as you would a regular, non-event work. At this point, you are no longer beholden to the prompts or eligible for the author award.

WHAT ABOUT ARTWORK-ONLY STORIES?

We thought about it, but we feel that submitting individual artwork pieces wasn’t in the spirit of the event, which is to work a narrative together through the randomness of the prompts. So, for this event, to keep the playing ground even for all creators, all pieces submitted must be narratives.

BUT I CAN SUBMIT NARRATIVE ARTWORK, LIKE A COMIC OR SOMETHING SIMILAR, RIGHT?

Of course! We hope you do! Submitting narrative artwork will make you eligible for the artist award, as will creating a story banner or illustration for any event piece.

YOU KEEP TALKING ABOUT AWARDS! TELL ME MORE!

Happy to! Wouldn’t be an EF event without awards. And this year, the awards (as well as the event banner) were designed by our good friend Trevor Carlee (for those of you who don’t know Trevor, he’s one half of EF’s favorite podcast, Another Buffy Podcast, an amazing artist, animator, and all-around swell human being).

Look how pretty!

         

AS A REMINDER: We now have the new beta/artist fields to submit with your story info. You must use these fields to make sure your betas and/or artist receives their award. Commenters will need to leave a minimum of 15 comments between the posting window (July 1 – August 4) that contain at least 5 words (for any stories here on EF, not just on challenge fics).

If you have to withdraw your submission from the event after posting the first chapter, any betas or artists who helped will still receive their awards.

SO ABOUT THOSE DATES…?

Here they are! Please note, all dates start at 12:00 am site time and end at 11:59 pm site time of the day given. Site time is currently in Eastern Daylight Time, and site time is posted underneath the Shoutbox if you ever need to check.

• Friday, June 28: Prompt One Announced
• Monday, July 1st to Sunday, July 7th: Posting Window for Prompt One
• Friday, July 5th: Prompt Two Announced
• Monday, July 8th to Sunday, July 14th: Posting Window for Prompt Two
• Friday, July 12th: Prompt Three Announced
• Monday, July 15th to Sunday, July 21st: Posting Window for Prompt Three
• Friday, July 19th: Prompt Four Announced
• Monday, July 22nd to Sunday, July 28th: Posting Window for Prompt Four
• Monday, July 29th to Sunday, August 4th: Fifth and final chapters to be posted

If you have any questions, please comment below!

ARE YOU READY?
START SUBMITTING PROMPTS!

Hi all,

We have some bad news. We learned today of an issue posting from Google Docs on iOS to the site. Basically, when you paste the text into the site (or most other places on your phone that we could see), certain special characters are not being correctly copied, so when they paste you get something that looks like — when all you wanted was an em-dash.

The good (?) news is that this is a widespread bug caused by either Apple or Google, and not anything we did, and is affecting other sites, including AO3, and other apps such as Apple Mail, Notes, and so on. Unfortunately, this makes work-arounds a little tricky. Posting on desktop is currently unaffected by the bug, but we know not everyone has access to desktop. If that applies to you, then the best option is probably a free Office 365 account, but even here we found during testing that copy/pasting from Docs to Word that certain formatting such as italics and bolding were lost. Copying from Docs to Word to EF also created weird line breaks. Instead, we would recommend saving your Docs file as a Word doc by clicking the three docs from the Docs menu (not from within the file) and selecting “Save as Word file (docx)”, then moving the copy of the file to the Files app on your phone. Then, in the Word app, you can choose to open files from the Files app.

Copying from Word directly does still have some issues, including loss of formatting such as italics/bolding. Alternatively, you could paste from Docs into a text file, but that formatting will still be lost.

We are exploring more permanent coding solutions, but since this seems to be a bug introduced by Apple or Google, and occurs in a wide variety of settings on iPhones, we may be limited in our ability to solve this one.

For April event fics, we know time is running out. If you need to get your fanwork up and don’t have time for work-arounds, please email us at elysianfieldsarchive@gmail.com and we will see what we can do to accommodate you.

This is a reminder for everyone posting (or planning to post) during our current April event: please use the new crediting system on the upload page. And triple check that you have got the username(s) of your betas, sensitivity readers, and/or artists spelled correctly, including punctuation where relevant. This greatly helps the Mod Team and means everyone will be able to get the awards they’ve earned faster going forward.

April Challenge Month is just around the corner, so here are all the details you need to get ready. (If you missed the announcement, see here.)

Once you have picked the challenge you wish to respond to and created your work (either fic or art), you will need to upload at least the first part between 00.00 on April 1st and 23.59 on April 30th site time, which appears under the ShoutBox on EF’s homepage. During the posting window, a tick box will appear on the upload page that, when checked, marks your work as part of the event.

After you have uploaded your work, you must link it to the challenge you’re responding to. To respond to a challenge, find the specific challenge on the Challenges page and then click “Respond to this Challenge” at the bottom of the challenge. Click the link, check the box next to the story that is the challenge response, and click submit. If your work is not linked to a challenge, you will not be eligible for awards.

Please note, the challenge you respond to must have been issued by another member. Works that respond to a challenge issued by the creator are not eligible for the event.

Event works will appear on the 2024 April Challenge Month page, be eligible for awards (designed by the wonderful bewildered), and get a little umbrella icon beside them (pictured below).

Below is the breakdown of how to qualify for each award:

• Author Award: Post a story or a work tagged as Narrative Artwork.
• Artist Award: Post a work tagged as Artwork or Narrative Artwork, contribute illustrations to an event story, or create a banner for an event story. Authors must credit their banner artists and illustrators, including themselves if they are an artist for the work.
• Beta Award: Perform a beta read or sensitivity read on an event work. Authors must credit their beta and sensitivity readers.
• Comment Award: Add 15 comments of at least 15 words each during the month of April. (see below for more details).

As always, authors must credit any beta readers, sensitivity readers, or artists who contributed to their story. Please use the new crediting fields on the Upload page to ensure everyone gets their hard-earned shinies. The Mods will not check summaries, story notes, or chapter notes for crediting, so this information must be in the crediting field. Please confirm you have the correct spelling and punctuation of usernames, as some members have very similar handles.

Commenters must leave at least 15 comments of at least 15 words each during the month of April to be eligible for the award. Comments do not need to be on event fics, though we always encourage people to read and comment on those!

Banner artists: please add a small line of text somewhere on event banners to say, Designed for Elysian Fields' 2024 April Challenge Month.

Happy creating!

Hi all! It’s been almost a year and a half since we added artwork to Elysian Fields and we couldn’t be happier with how it’s been going—over 100 stories marked “artwork” have been added to the site since then, and we don’t think that number is slowing down any.

During that year and a half, however, we have noticed that our artwork tagging could use some improvement. There’s some confusion over which tags to use when, and the “Exclusively Artwork” checkbox conflicts with our site events, causing headaches for members trying to add their artwork to events.

With that in mind, we’re rolling out the following changes to artwork tags:

• We are retiring the Artwork genre. Artwork is really a category of fanwork, not a genre, and this removes the duplication of tagging and reduces confusion about whether to use both the Artwork genre and category or just one.
• All works tagged with the NSFW Artwork category, the NSFW Artwork genre, and the Artwork genre have been retagged by the mods and are now in the Artwork category.
• A new category has been added, Narrative Artwork. Narrative Artwork is defined as a fanwork that combines written and visual art. Visual art is defined as a visual image or set of visual images including but not limited to drawings, digitally manipulated photographs, or videos. Works in the Narrative Artwork category must meet the criteria for story submissions.
• The Artwork category is now defined as a visual image or set of visual images including but not limited to drawings, digitally manipulated photographs, or videos. Words, if present, are limited and/or incidental.
• The Exclusively Artwork checkbox has been retired. All stories labeled using this checkbox have been added to the Artwork category if they were not already tagged with the category.

We ask all artists to check their stories and ensure they are tagged with the appropriate tags, including the categories for Artwork and Narrative Artwork as well as all the correct ratings and relevant warnings.

We're aware these changes might sound complicated, but we believe that they’ll simplify the process of posting, sharing, finding, and enjoying art on the site. If you have any questions, please reach out to us at elysianfieldsarchive@gmail.comor comment below.

It’s not long to go until EF’s next mini-event, folks!

If you missed the announcement about the Monster Mash, see the news post linked here. Or if you need a little reminder, the theme is Monster Mash. There is a monster in town* and Spike and Buffy team up to take it down. (*The fic does not need to be set in Sunnydale. Road trips and fics where Buffy and Spike live in other towns or cities count.)

The posting window for stories and art is one day (from 12 am/midnight until 11.59 pm on March 10th) and the window to earn the commenter award is three days (same start time, but running until 11.59pm on March 12th). Members can post artwork, drabbles, one-shots, or even multi-chapter fics if they wish, so long as they post the complete work before the end of the event.

As mentioned in the announcement post, there will be awards on offer for participants, artists (including banner artists), commenters, and betas.

For the commenting award, you’ll need to make 10 comments of at least 15 words during the previously stated three-day window. Event deadlines are based on site time, which is always listed just under the Shoutbox on EF’s homepage.

Anyone who submits an artwork-only piece will be eligible for both an author and artist award.

Banners should include the words "Designed for the Elysian Fields 2024 Monster Mash Event" in small, yet legible text.

During the posting window, when you go to add a new work, a tickbox will appear as depicted in the screenshot below. Ticking said box marks your work as officially part of the event (meaning it’s listed on the dedicated event page), generates a special event icon to appear beside your work title, and makes you eligible for awards (above, designed by the wonderful ClowniestLivEver, who also suggested the event theme).

Note: If you are ticking the event box, ignore the ‘artwork only’ tickbox even if it would usually apply. This is because only one tickbox can be applied to each work. If you accidentally tick the artwork only box, or tick both boxes, contact a member of the Mod Team and we will correct it on the backend of the site.

Also remember: credit your beta(s) and/or banner artist(s) if you use them! If you made your own banner and want your artist award, please tell us in the story notes that you made it. (The Mod Team has many talents, but being psychic is sadly not one of them.)

Any other questions in the meantime, you know the drill: comment below!

Can you believe it’s almost that time of year again?

For the month of April, EF will once again be running our Challenge Month event. 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 post the first installment between midnight on April 1st and 23.59 on April 30th (site time).

You can respond to as many challenges or as few 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, we recommend that you contact the person who 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 email at elysianfieldsarchive@gmail.com. Further details including what the awards for authors, commenters, betas, and artists will look like will be posted closer to the time.

After the success of EF’s first mini-event, the Satisfaction-athon last year, we have decided to run another one. Again, it will be for one day only, but this time the theme is Monster Mash and the date will be March 10th.

Credit for the theme idea goes to ClowniestLivEver, who implanted it in the Mod Team’s minds many months ago.

To clarify the theme: There is a monster in town* and Spike and Buffy team up to take it down. (*The fic does not need to be set in Sunnydale. Road trip fics count.)

The monster or monsters, plural, can be from the show (literally any of the minor monster-of-the-weeks. e.g. Luke, the Gorch brothers, Amy's mom, etc.); a classical monster (Frankenstein's monster, Wolf Man, the Invisible Man); a monster that is both (Dracula); or an original character monster.

Members can post artwork, drabbles, one-shots, or even multi-chapter fics if they wish, so long as they post the complete work before the end of the event. There will be awards on offer for participants, artists (including banner artists), commenters, and betas, which we will reveal the artwork for closer to the time.

Anyone who submits an artwork-only piece will be eligible for both a participant and artist award.

Commenters must leave a minimum of ten comments of at least fifteen words during the three days (72 hours) following event kick-off, i.e. 00:00 (12:00 am) on March 10th until 23:59 (11:59 pm) on March 12th, according to site time (which you can check under the ShoutBox on EF’s homepage).

Hello EF! It’s officially a new year, which means it’s time to look back on the completion of our last trip around the sun together.

And what a trip it’s been! The last twelve months have been rife with changes for the archive—amazing changes. In fact, I started this post by revisiting our 2022: A Year In Review post from last year, reviewing some of the initiatives we planned to undertake. Just the tip of the iceberg, really.

In 2023, accomplishments include:

• Introducing Finishing Months, which will return in 2025
• Launching EF’s first mini-event
• Introducing Drabblemania, a spin on our July event
• Ironing out many of the kinks remaining after our former host’s March 2022 update, such as finally returning the site to Eastern Time
• Ditching that host for a brand-new host home that we love
• Establishing Elysian Fields as a not-for-profit
• Creating the first logo in the site’s 17-year history, courtesy of amazing triple-threat bewildered
• Reaching the milestone of 1,000 authors
• Introducing a new commenting award, inspired by the commenting machine Magnus374, and attainable by any member who leaves 1,000 comments or more in a single month. Since then, another member has joined the ranks: violettathepiratequeen! We also retroactively applied this award to any member who has achieved it in the site's history.

And really, y’all, so many other things. It’s been hard to keep track of all the improvements and changes that have been made this year, large and small. We’re not slowing down, either. Already we’ve announced new awards: Star Commenter Award, the Superstar Commenter Award, and the Artist of the Month Award. There is a lot more coming in the way of improvements and updates, so stay tuned because our team has been busy.

Speaking of our team, one of the best things that happened to EF in 2023 was the addition of cawthraven to the Mod team. Even before she was an official Mod, she was working closely with DarkVoid116 to help troubleshoot, implement, and roll out many behind-the-scenes improvements and updates. Suffice it to say, that has continued.

And all while we continued the proud history of site events, with Finishing Months in January-March, the Satisfaction-athon in February, Challenge Month in April, Drabblemania in July, the Truce Challenge in October for the site’s anniversary, and our fourth Secret Santa Fic Exchange. Once again, you guys blew our expectations out of the water.

So are you ready for awards?

In the fourth year of recognizing the milestone that is Completed Fics, we had 113 authors complete a total of 612 fics; that’s a staggering 225 more fics than last year.

All authors who completed a fic (one-shots count!) in 2023 have been issued this award:

The other award seeing its fourth year is the Event Complete Award (formerly the Challenge Complete Award). This was awarded to site members who completed any site event challenge in 2023 (that is, the challenge events that are overseen by the EF Mods and come with spiffy thematic skins and stuff). The exception here being Secret Santa, as finishing the fic is baked into the challenge itself.

And speaking of Secret Santa, we have some numbers to share.

We had 44 event contributions, which have garnered 1124 likes and 539 comments. All participants who completed their fics and/or art should now have their participant award on their profile.

P.S. If you haven't read the fics yet, you can find them all on the Secret Santa event page, which is also accessible by going to Events >> 2023 Secret Santa.

We also have issued awards to our most prolific members. These are chosen by the numbers.

In 2023, we added:

• 10,328,329 words
• 729 stories
• 5,430  chapters
• 1,654 new members
• 120,624 new likes
• 49,227 new comments to the archive (comprising 2,096,789 words)

Top 10 Commenters

• magnus374 (195,698 words)* (Recipient of Most Prolific Commenter Award 2023)
• Nightcandle (186,360 words)
• violettathepiratequeen (114,845 words)
• swonderful (108,290 words)
• Green (99,988 words)
• pfeifferpack (91,802 words)
• All4Spike (71,625 words)
• bmerb (66,024 words)
• The Danish Bird (49,244 words)
• acekoomboom (49,002 words)

Top 10 Authors

• scratchmeout (458,340 words)* (Recipient of Most Prolific Author Award 2023)
• Holly (414,070 words)
• RavenLove12 (365,302 words)
• Geliot99 (331,713 words)
• honeygirl51885 (312,928 words)
• all_choseny (285,868 words)
• acb6293 (272,588 words)
• Desicat (246,564 words)
• ClowniestLiveEver (244,439 words)
• CheekyKitten (241,374 words)

If you are missing an award you should have received, please reach out to us (elysianfieldsarchive@gmail.com) and we’ll verify and get that corrected.

Folks, we had an amazing year. Thank you all so much for what you give to our wonderful community. We eagerly await the amazing contributions we know you will make to the archive as we celebrate another year of Spuffy. And we’re just getting started.

Hey everyone! You may have noticed we just hit one thousand authors on the site—a huge milestone for our little archive. We couldn’t do it without all of you, whether you read quietly or comment constantly, whether you make and share art or just drool over it, whether you’ve never posted a fic or you post tens of thousands of words a year to Elysian Fields. Every single one of you is so important to the site and we want to thank you for being part of what makes our community so great. So this celebration is a celebration of everyone who has ever been to Elysian Fields. Thank you—Spuffy may have brought us together, but you’re the reason we’re all still here.

To celebrate our milestone achievement, we have a new skin called “onethousand.” While we’ll be adding “onethousand” as a new skin, for a limited time only it will randomly select a banner from each of our active skins to display. (And much thanks to cawthraven’s brother, who helped write that bit of code while visiting on Thanksgiving.) If you’re watching closely, you may also see our new One Thousand banner in there!

Also, starting January 1, the featured fics will randomly select fics from throughout our 18-year history to display, so you can see a wide range of our 1,000 authors whenever you load the main page of the site.

Again, thank you to our authors and all our members. We’re so excited to keep growing with you all.

Special shout out to though_you_try, whose fic, Let Me Count the Ways, put us at 1000.

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

Here’s the news post you’ve been waiting for: Secret Santa sign-ups are OPEN!

There is a lot of info below, and I recommend taking your time to read it all if you wish to take part, but the short version is this: during December, members who have signed up will give and receive a fic (or artwork!). 

If you’ve never taken part before, or if you need a reminder, here’s how it works: 

As of this post going live, you can fill in a GOOGLE FORM HERE to sign up. 

Everyone who signs up to participate will write one fic or make a piece of art and receive one fic or piece of art. (You can opt out of giving or receiving art in the Google form if you’re only interested in written fic). Each fic MUST be a “one-shot” size (or be posted as a single “chapter” in the case of art). 

The chapter word limit is 15,000 words here on EF, but variations in software word counting sometimes mean that there is a discrepancy between the EF word count and what Microsoft or Google Docs will tell you. It is the author’s responsibility to make sure their story fits. If your fic is approaching the limit, we recommend leaving ample time for edits to make sure you can post correctly and before the deadline.

There is no word count minimum to this event. 

Gifts DO NOT need to be holiday-related in any way (unless your giftee requests it!). 

Participants will receive an award on their profile at the end of the event. There are no additional awards for betas, artists, or commenters. Both authors and artists will receive the same ‘2023 Secret Santa Participant’ award. Artists who create banners for other people’s gifts will not be eligible for a participant award. 

Once you sign up, EF Event Mod EllieRose101 will make best case matches from all of the responses and then reach out to each participant with the penname and story preferences of their giftee. Please remember that this gift-giving is confidential. Don’t share who you have for a giftee until you post your fic! Revealing that information ahead of time will allow demonic Santa to start his spree of terror early, and that would just be a bad time for everyone.

Any member, whether they've previously written a fic on EF or not, is eligible to partake in this event––UNLESS you signed up for last year’s Secret Santa event and did not complete your fic or did not complete your fic by the deadline. Those members will have already been notified (at the end of last year’s event) and will not be eligible to participate this year, but may participate again in 2024.

Please note that bad behavior toward your gifter or giftee, in regards to either the gift you receive or the gift you deliver, will result in a permanent ban from this event for all future years. We wish we didn’t have to say it, but we do.

Any ineligibility will be communicated to you by a mod, if it becomes relevant. Otherwise, you may assume you are good to go.

Important Dates: 

• Today: Sign-Ups Open (See link, above.)
• 11.59pm site time on Monday 20th November: Sign-Ups close 
• 22nd & 23rd November: Assignments Distributed
• 1st December: Participants can start posting
• 11:59 pm 31st December, site time: All gifts must be exchanged. 

No late sign-ups or publishing will be allowed.* Leaving a participant giftless will make Spuffy deeply sad, and we can’t have that, and will result in ineligibility from participating in Secret Santa for at least one year. (A one year ban if you don’t post but at least tell us, or a lifetime ban from participating if we never hear from you.)

*If you miss the deadline to post, please still send your gift, just be aware that it won’t officially count towards the event. And in either case––I cannot stress this enough––TELL US what’s happening! 

Whether or not you sign-up to participate in the event itself, you can sign-up to be a Secret Santa Rescue Writer! Either choose "yes" on the event sign-up form where it asks, or email EllieRose101 at elysianfieldsarchive@gmail.com and let her know that you'd like to be on the volunteer Rescue Writer list. If she ends up with someone in need, she may reach out to you (by no later than Dec. 16th) to see if you can rescue a gift.

Any questions? Comment below!

Hi all! We wanted to let you know about some email issues that are sort of growing pains with the new site host. With our new plan, we have a limit on how many daily emails we can send (unlike our old host), and we sorta exceeded that on October 23. The downside is this shuts down our email for 24 hours, so we are unable to send the digest, story updates, comment notifications, author response replies, or PM notifications until that 24-hour period lapses.

Normally, the digest and story updates are placed into a queue and would go out as normal once email is restored. Due to the busy nature of October being an event month, we anticipate a domino effect of “too many emails” if we do this. In light of that, as a short-term fix, we have decided to turn off the digest for all users for a couple of days (so the digest that would send on October 24 and October 25) and will restore it once our email volume is under the limits.

In the meantime, we are looking into longer-term fixes that would prevent this from happening. We will keep you informed of any future outages.