Happy November, fellow After Dark-ers!

The holidays approach! And as such, it’s time to reveal our next event. We’re very excited for this one. To celebrate the season we will be hosting a white elephant fic and art exchange!

What does this mean? How does this work?

Much like any white elephant gift exchange! (You can read a generic explanation of the tradition here)

Essentially, everyone who wants to create will submit a prompt as their “gift.” 

At our live gift-opening event on Discord, we'll all arrive for a fun time with our favorite party drink in hand (Buffy themed cocktails anyone? Tea for the Ruperts?). 

We will have all the gifts (prompts!) numbered and use a randomizer to select the gift-opening order. The first person will “open” their gift by choosing a number, and everyone will get to see the prompt. The second person can then choose to steal that gift or open a new one to reveal a new prompt. The third person can then choose to steal any of the revealed prompts or open a new one. Any time a gift is stolen from you, you get to open a new one! This continues until everyone has a prompt as their gift. 

Anyone who is unable to attend the live gift-opening session can absolutely still participate and receive a prompt, they simply won’t have the option to steal. The admins will email you your prompt after the exchange is complete.

Since we’d like all our creators to be able to participate, in either fic or art form, we ask that you keep your prompts fairly open-ended so that it’s translatable to word or art. Try to also keep in mind that we all have varying comfort levels of what we’re willing to create. 

Example prompt ideas:

• Buffy and Spike’s first Christmas spent together.
• Season 4 with a sassy Spuffy!
• Uh oh. There’s only one bed…

It will also be important to remember that when someone receives your gift, they won’t know it was your prompt and won’t be tailoring it to your specific tastes. When the story or artwork is posted, you’re welcome to reveal that the prompt was yours, but during the creation process, please preserve the surprise! And, of course, please always be supportive to all of our generous creators, whether the creation turns out how you anticipated or not.

The date and time of the prompt gift exchange will be announced after everyone signs up and submits their preferences for when the exchange should take place. There will be four options to vote on.

To sign up, please submit this form by November 15.

After the gift exchange, stories and artwork will be posted any time throughout the month of December. Commenters, betas, and banner artists will be eligible for their own holiday awards throughout this month. Betas and banner artists must contribute to one of the white elephant prompt creations. Commenters must comment 15x on any fics or art throughout the month of December. Awards will be distributed in January.

We cannot wait to host this event! It should be a really fun time for the whole community to connect and get creative! 

Cheers!