Stargate Atlantis Secret Santa 2012

In 2005, back when the SGA fandom was still wee and we had about 150 stories on Wraithbait and about 100 people on the mailing list, moonlettuce turned to me and said, "Hey, you know what would be really fun?"

Knowing Claire as I do, I immediately started looking for the nearest exit.

"No," she said. "Hear me out. We should totally run a Secret Santa for SGA. It will be awesome!" *

I eyed her warily, as is my wont whenever she gets that look in her eye. "Won't that be a lot of work?"

"Nah." She waved her hand loftily. "If we're lucky, we might get 10, 20 people signing up?" **

9 exchanges, several million words and 780 stories later...

We honestly never thought back then that we'd reach the milestone of 10 SGA Secret Santa Exchanges and yet, here we are. Yes, 2014 is our 10th exchange, and we've thoroughly enjoyed *** every single one of them.



Thank you all for making this milestone possible! ♥

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. We've therefore we've decided that this year's exchange will be the last one. 10 seems a good round number to stop at, and with the fandom becoming increasingly quiet, and the number of sign ups diminishing year on year, we'd like to end on a relatively high note rather than outstay our welcome :)

We will continue to keep the comm on both LJ and DW to serve as a record of all of the fun we've had, and I'll continue to archive all of the stories that were too big to post to LJ, so none of the stories or comments left on them will disappear. For that same reason - to make sure that everything that's ever been posted as part of the fest continues to be available - we won't be handing the reins of this particular exchange over to anyone else, although if anyone wants to run their own SGA exchange next year, we will, of course, offer any advice and support we can.

So, with the aim of going out with a bang rather than a whimper, sign ups will open tomorrow and run for longer than usual to give everyone who wants to take part in our last hurrah the chance to come and play. The deadline for story submissions will still be December 10th, and posting will start on December 14th.

So while you're thinking of all the things you want to ask for or to write, please, please spread the word of the fest far and wide to anyone you think might be interested. It would be lovely to see some past participants join us for our last big blow out.

So let's go out with a bang, and - most of all - have fun! :D



* Claire was not wrong about the awesome :D

** we had 84

*** for a value of 'enjoy' that involves swearing copiously at spreadsheets :D Damn you, conditional formatting!

Hi guys

The latest extension requests we gave were until today. I'm now starting to get requests to extend the extension, so I figured it was best to set it out here.

Firstly, please stick to your original extension if at all possible.

If you can't make your original extended deadline, please let us know as soon as possible by mailing us at sgasanta at gmail dot com. Don't make us chase you! I've been watching Primeval: New World and I'm eyeing those neat taser guns they have (Becker's wasn't quite that cool!).

If you miss your deadline and don't contact us, we'll put your assignment out to pinch hit within 24 hours of your deadline expiring. We do reply to all mail and check our spam folder regularly, so if you've contacted us and haven't heard back, we haven't received your email. Please try again, leave a comment here or PM us.

We are not giving any extensions after 17 December 8pm GMT, so please don't ask us for an extension past that. Any stories not with us by then will go out to pinch hit. You can still submit your story even if we've arranged a pinch hit.

I feel really hardass now. I'm blaming the dinosaurs.

Hi guys

Stories have started to trickle in now (and the deadline for requests for extensions was yesterday do if you need one and haven't asked for one hie thee to your email programme right now :D) so I thought it a good time to remind you all that formatting info can be found on the admin: formatting tag :)

ETA: Please e-mail us with requests for extensions rather than commenting here. It's a lot easier to keep track of it that way, and don't forget to include the LJ name you used to sign up with when you contact us. Thanks!

Matching is complete and we are hoping to start sending out the assignments tonight. There are a couple of things, however, I need to alert you to or remind you of before we start :-)

Matching

It's never going to be possible to have a perfect match for everyone, or in fact anyone, especially as we encourage people to make a list in the spirit of 'shy bairns get nowt'. However, just like people who put everything up to and including the kitchen sink, and a pony to put in it, on their Christmas lists, no one expects you to give them everything. Except, possibly, a pony.

So please don't panic if you get your assignment and it includes things that you didn't offer or in fact said you couldn't write. You have not been matched on those. You've only been matched on the things that you did offer and no one expects you to write anything other than that (unless, of course, you want to :-)). I know it seems a bit counterintuitive that you'd be matched with somebody who requested something that you specifically said you didn't want to write, but sometimes you're the best match for them even in spite of that.

If we have genuinely screwed up and given you an assignment that you simply can't write, please let us know as soon as possible so that we can rejig when necessary. On the other hand, if you said that you'll write anything, we've taken you at your word and it's too late to back out now. [insert evil laughter here]

Writing

Please pay attention not only to your recipient's wants but also their do not wants. It's very easy to overlook that they said they didn't want this marvellous thing that you suddenly had a brilliant idea for, but it's also fairly quick way to turn someone's smile upside down.

If you're in any doubt as to whether your idea is going to work or not, please feel free to run it past Claire or me. We'll give you our honest opinion on whether or not we think it will work and, if necessary, we'll contact the recipient on your behalf to clarify it.

I know that it can be a bit gutting if you have a brilliant idea sparked by your recipient's request and then realise you can't write it for them, but don't forget that we will be running SGA Santa Madness again this year and someone else may love it if you write it as an additional story, or failing that, you can always try stuffing someone's fandom_stocking (that's not snark by the way – I love fandom_stocking and you should all write me Abigail/King!).

Submissions and Deadlines

You might notice something a little different about your assignment email this year. Like the fact it's coming from a different email address. Yes, in our normal spirit of extreme organisation, Claire and I did actually set up an SGA Santa email address. Two years ago, when it finally dawned on us that it would be quite a good idea. Needless to say, we promptly forgot about it when it came time to send out last year's assignments.

So we have an email address – sgasanta at gmail dot com. Please whitelist it or do what ever clever voodoo you do to make sure it doesn't hit your spam folder. Also, please remember to send your assignment into this address rather than any addresses you have for Claire or I individually. Your assignment will come from this address, so hitting reply to your assignment mail should work.

Now we come to the deadlines question. The timetable is exactly the same as it's been since the very first SGA Santa, which means that stories should be with us by 10 December at the very, very latest. I know Claire and I are generally easy-going and if you request an extension we tend to be fairly flexible in granting one. However, that flexibility was tested to its very limits when 10 December last year rolled around and we had fewer than half the stories.

Consequently, this year requests for extensions should be in to us by 5 December at the very latest and be accompanied by a substantial bribe of chocolate and/or Ryan Reynolds. (I'm joking about the chocolate.)

That's not to say that we won't still be reasonable where we can if you request an extension later than that, because we know that things unexpectedly crop up at the last minute, but it will help our blood pressure significantly if you mentally designate 10 December as 'the end of the road is here' instead of pencilling in something like the 15th into your fannish commitment calendar (you know who you are :D). Otherwise, there may be crying and flailing and taking your name in vain involved :D There may even be Paddington Bear stares, and you wouldn't want that.

Final note about submissions – I'm still crippled, so your assistance in making sure that when you submit something it's formatted as well as you can would still be very appreciated. There'll be a formatting post at some point explaining all of that, but I fully expect mocking about all of the Dragon caused misheard words in any admin posts or emails I make or send :D Have at it.

Okay guys, according to the Spreadsheet o' Doom, everyone who submitted a story should now has at least one story to call their very own. Please let me know if I've missed you and you haven't got a story despite a) signing up and b) submitting your story. (If you're a pinch hitter who hasn't signed up and therefore hasn't received a story, I'll be contacting you shortly for some prompts.)

I therefore declare that Santa Madness is open! \o/

Feel free to browse the request tags and write extra treats for people. Santa Madness stories will be posted between the 26th and 31st and all stories should be sent to us at alyse or moonlettuce at livejournal.com.

Pinch hitter appreciation post to come shortly, once I've had a chance to trawl through prompts.

ETA: Also, please consider this your official 'guess the author' post :)

Just a reminder that sign ups close at midnight tomorrow, people! (That's the 9th, for those of you who, like me, are datally challenged ::g::)

So if you're planning to sign up and haven't yet, now's the time to do it!

We're waiting for one more pinch hit to come through. The last I heard yesterday was that it was supposed to be coming last night, but it still hasn't tipped up in my inbox (unlike a mail from Claire that finally arrived 10 hours late this morning, sigh).

I haven't given up entirely on it, but given that it's Christmas Day, if anyone would like to write a short treat - drabble, ficlet, whatever length - for that recipient and send it on through to alyseci5 at gmail dot com and moonlettuce at blueyonder dot co dot uk so that this person can have at least something today, that would be utterly fabulous. The request is for McKay/Sheppard, angsty with a happy ending and Christmas related if possible. ETA: the more the merrier - there's no need to claim this one! And I'll post the full time story whenever we get it.

And once the last pinch hit is in, Santa Madness will open and I'll post the Pinch Hitters Appreciation prompts.

Thank you, and a Merry Christmas to all!

Dear all

Remember how I said that aithine was working on an easy to use template for the stories hosted on my website? Well, she's done it, and here is an example of how it will look using one of last year's stories, Leah's The Sacrificial Mage:

Last year's template

This year's template

The main difference - other than being much neater than my attempt ::g:: - is that the notes etc are in a php file, which will make it easier to edit author names in at the reveal, and to edit the link back to the sga_santa post for that story.

If anyone is feeling particularly html savvy and would like to code their own stories, here is a link to the template-info.php file, which contains all of the story notes etc. Please note that this is not obligatory. If you just send us the story file, we're quite happy to code it up for you and it may be easier for us to do it anyway if it's something you're not entirely used to. This is just for people like me who like messing around with this stuff ::g::

( info for those who like messing about ::g:: )