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Snupin Santa will begin in a few hours!!! Because your main mod is a vampire, gifts might go up in the wee hours some days. Be sure to check back on your flists to find entries.
Although it's mentioned below, I want to reiterate - give the gift of a comment this year. All the ways you can comment are explained in great detail below, and the participants have worked very hard to bring everyone the gift of Snape/Lupin this year. Take just a few moments to day something on the gifts you view, even if it's just "thank you". It matters.
POSTNG:
The schedule is convoluted this year because of the way the weekends and holidays fall in December. There will be a story today and tomorrow, and then the schedule is as follows starting December 3:
M-Th for the three weeks before Christmas, 2 posts/day.
Fr-Sat all month - 1 post/day
Dec. 26 - 29 - 1 post/day
Sundays, Dec. 24-25, 31 - off
Reveals January 9 - Severus' birthday!
All gifts will be posted in full on the Fest website with announcements containing basic header information and a direct link to the gift on Livejournal, Insanejournal, and Dreamwidth. If you want to see the full gift, you'll have to click over to the website. So, basically, you can receive updates when new gifts have been posted in one of four ways:
Snupin Santa Fest archive
lupin_snape on Livejournal
lupin_snape on Insanejournal
lupin_snape on dreamwidth
The gifts posted most recently will appear on the main page of the archive (scroll down until you see the red bar reading "Most Recent"), and all gifts posted within the last 14 days will appear on the Recently Added page. All gifts posted for the 2009 fest will appear on the Snupin Santa 2012 category page in alphabetical order by title.
Let me remind anyone who has not used eFiction before, if you don't like the look of the site, you can change it. There are detailed instructions on how to change the appearance of the site temporarily or permanently on the Help page (along with other useful info). There are several other "skins" to choose from, so everyone should be able to find something they like or at least can live with if they don't like the default skin for whatever reason, but if not, they're welcome to find an eFiction 3.0 skin they do like and send me the zip file of it.
Fest-related news will be posted to the News section of the website (scroll down until you see the red bar reading "Site News") as well as on the Lupin_Snape communities. The most recent news posts will be on the main page, and all news posts, including older ones, will be in the News archive.
LEAVING COMMENTS:
Unfortunately, anonymous commenting is not enabled at the Fest site because while it is protected from bots and search engines, direct links make it vulnerable to spammers, and that ship sailed for us many years ago. You're welcome to make an account at the fest archive so you can make "signed" comments. You can also leave comments on any community gift announcement from your journal account. Finally, the Lupin_Snape communities allow anonymous comments as well - they're screened, but mods will unscreen them so the participants can see what you have to say.
Can you tell we want your comments? Nothing encourages and gives back to the participants like reading what you thought of their work. I won't make comment rules, however, if you spot typos, send a message to snupin_santa at yahoo.com, pointing them out. We'll fix 'em! It would only frustrate anonymous participants to be told there's errors in their work - they can't fix errors until after the exchange. But the elves are happy to, so leave those comments with us!
NOTE TO PARTICIPANTS:
1) Once the gift you created is posted, whether it's a story or art, if there's a major problem that needs to be fixed, you may email snupin_santa at yahoo.com, and one of the elves will fix it. The gifts from the Snupin Santa account will be moved to the author/artists' accounts sometime after the reveal in January if you spot minor corrections that you want to make. If you're a participant who doesn't have an account at the site yet, you might want to make one.
2) Writers might also want to check the text of their story to make certain it's all there. We double-check to make certain there weren't copy/paste errors when uploading long stories, but accidents happen.
3) DO NOT leave any comments on IJ, LJ, DW, or the archive that might reveal who you are! This is an anonymous exchange, and we want to keep everyone guessing until the master list is posted in January. You won't be able to answer feedback comments anonymously on the website, so you'll have to wait until January to reply, but I'm sure in the interest of maintaining the anonymous fun, no one will be offended by the lack of a speedy response.
4) I strongly advise using the comment tracking systems on LJ/IJ/DW, even if you don't normally use them. There are people who will comment only at IJ and people who will comment only at LJ, etc., so if you don't check your gift post at all three journals, you might miss some feedback. If you have an account at IJ/LJ, all you have to do is click the thumbtack icon at the top of the post. On DW, there's a "track this" link at the bottom of most posts. If you don't have an account at one of the journals, you can always bookmark the post and check back.
That's all our preliminary business out of the way, so all that's left now is to wait for the Snupin Santa sleigh to arrive! There will be over 30 new RL/SS stories and graphics posted between December 1-29 - all eras, all ratings, long stories, short stories, smutty art, sweet art, romance, dark themes, holiday cheer, tear jerkers, and happy endings. No matter what flavor of Snupin is your favorite, I guarantee there will be something for everyone!