Entries tagged with 2017

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Countdown to small gifts 6/7: Remus vs. Sirius

Hi, folks! If you're just joining us, we're on DAY SIX of seven days of discussion before Small Gifts begins posting. Start off by introducing yourself (and meeting fellow participants and watchers) over here!

Day 6: Remus vs. Sirius

Do you identify with Remus (or some of his personality characteristics) or Sirius (or some of his personality characteristics?--or both or neither? Has that affected how you prefer to read/write/draw/see the pairing? Does it affect you preference for a POV character? Has your identification with one or the other changed over time?

P.S. Sorry this post is so late today, folks!

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Countdown to small gifts 5/7: Back to canon

Hi, folks! If you're just joining us, we're on DAY FIVE of seven days of discussion before Small Gifts begins posting. Start off by introducing yourself (and meeting fellow participants and watchers) over here!

Day 4: Back to canon

What's your favorite book and/or movie, and why?

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Countdown to small gifts 4/7:

Hi, folks! If you're just joining us, we're on DAY FOUR of seven days of discussion before Small Gifts begins posting. Start off by introducing yourself (and meeting fellow participants and watchers) over here!

Day 4: Wish lists for R/S (a.k.a. MOAR ON DAY FOUR!)

What would you like to see more of in R/S fandom? Types of fic or art? Themes or tropes? Minor characters? Fannish activities? Also, fandoms change over time--if you've been around a while, what do you miss about earlier moments in fandom?

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Countdown to small gifts 3/7: Head canon

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Countdown to small gifts 2/7: The very beginning

Welcome, folks! Every year at small gifts, we start off the holiday season with a week's worth of discussion posts. It's a chance to get to know other participants (or say hi again), meet our readers (hi, readers! we love you!), and while away the hours before December 1. We'll have one topic per day until November 30.

Day 2: The very beginning

Wait! Have you introduced yourself? Said hi to someone else? Head on over to Countdown to small gifts 1/7: Introductions! before you do anything else!

Done? Okay: beginnings. Tell us about the first time you knew Remus/Sirius was for you. It may or may not be your OPT, it may be your only pairing or one of several dozen you read or write or draw, but usually folks have a moment when things click--canon makes more sense with these two together, or you read a fic that convinced you, or a friend said something that drew you to R/S. Tell us about it!

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Countdown to small gifts 1/7: Introductions!

Welcome, folks! Every year at small gifts, we start off the holiday season with a week's worth of discussion posts. It's a chance to get to know other participants (or say hi again), meet our readers (hi, readers! we love you!), and while away the hours before December 1. We'll have one topic per day until November 30.

Today: introductions!

1) Leave a comment letting us know who you are as a fan. (Leave your Tumblr name/AO3 name as well as your DW name, if they're different.) How long have you shipped R/S? Are you a reader? Writer? Artist? Crafter? Do you participate in any other parts of Harry Potter fandom? Are you active in any other fandoms right now?

2) Say hi to someone else!

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2017,
mod post

Submission deadline reminder

Hello smallgifters,

Remember that gifts are due by midnight on Monday, November 27. That’s midnight your time, where ever you are. If you think you are going to need an extension, please let us know by emailing us at rs.small.gifts@gmail.com or messaging us.

For those of you who are new to small_gifts, we use a moderated queue. That means that you submit your gift to the community, just as you would for any other post. It then disappears from your sight and into the queue. We can see it, but we can’t edit it. If there are any formatting problems or other major issues, we will send it back to you with a note about the issue. Once December 1 rolls around, we will approve one or two gifts a day and they will become public.

If you need a beta or are willing to beta, pull on your smoking jacket and head on over to the Beta Lounge, HERE

We’ll have another post in a couple of days with more about pre and post-fest festivities and other nuggets.

On a very exciting note, we had 44 participants sign up this year. 44!!! We haven’t had that many for several years. We have a combination of old and new friends and we are looking forward to a fantastic year!

Cheers,

Maggie and Min

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Posting Instructions

It's time for posting instructions (or, seriously, some of you are finished and have tried to post already?!?!) We are new to DW community moderation, so for those of you who tried to submit and saw the post go public, we are sorry! We believe it's fixed now. Here's how to submit:

OVERVIEW

At Small Gifts, you submit your gift by posting directly to

small_gifts. The community is in moderated status, which means that your post will remain hidden and saved in the queue until your mods approve/post it in December. It then will appear exactly as you submitted it, so make sure you've put on the finishing touches! We will review posts for formatting problems and will "reject" your post if necessary so this link broken tags can be fixed.

POSTING INSTRUCTIONS

1) All gifts of fic should be beta read. We will put up a beta lounge post later today so that people can request and offer services.

2) Please format your subject line as follows: Gift type: Title for Recipient. For example:

Art: A Grim Season at Grimmauld Place for lily_evans
Fic: Catty Fireside Stories for peter_pettigrew

No need for quotes or italics with your title or any formatting of your recipient's user name. Clean and simple!

3) Please use the following header:

You can delete the notes line if you do not have notes. Please retain the contents or warnings line, though! If you don't have any warnings, simply type "none" where you see "insert warnings here." You should let readers know of major character death, graphic description of violence, rape or non-con, or underage sex.

4) Place your gift itself under a cut, using your title, your first line, or a short quotes as the cut text. Here's how to do that, if you have any questions.

5) Forget something? Need to tinker? Your post is inaccessible to you while it is in the queue. If you need to fix something, just e-mail us at rs.small.gifts at gmail dot com and ask us to reject your post from the queue. You can then resubmit.

If anything goes awry with your formatting or submission, your mods will reject your post and ask you to resubmit. Please keep an eye on your inbox in case we need to alert you to a problem!

POSTING TO OTHER SITES

Every day between December 1 and December 31, your mods will post a gift from the moderation queue. As soon as your gift has appeared here on

small_gifts, you're free to crosspost to your own journal or wherever you'd like.

If you've been archiving your work at Archive of Our Own, you have the option to add it to this year's collection, rs_small_gifts 2017. (You can see all Small Gifts fic submitted to AO3 here.) There's a tutorial showing how to add a work to a collection here.

INTERESTED IN PARTICIPATING FURTHER?

Want to create a second gift? Want to participate but didn't sign up in October? Look for chances to create second gifts and participate in an open round after first gifts are all up. We also almost always need some pinch hitters, so comment here or email us let us know if you're interested.

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Small Gifts Sign Ups 2017!

Welcome to the 12th annual Remus/Sirius Small Gifts year-end gift exchange! We're delighted to see everyone--whether you're back for your twelfth round or joining us for the first time. Anyone who loves Remus and Sirius and wants to see them have some holiday fun, adventures, and perhaps a little egg nog, is welcome here. This is the fest for your low-stress, year-end, R/S needs.

***The one new thing you need to note: we're moving our base of operations from Livejournal to Dreamwidth. Please sign up for a DW account if you don't already have one; you'll need one to post your gift to the queue at the end of November.***

*** And please read carefully. This post explains how sign ups, claiming, and posting take place. Please note the 24-hour claiming window--you'll select your own recipient in real time on Saturday, October 21. ***

Follow these three easy steps to celebrate the end of 2017 with Remus, Sirius, and friends, new and old.

1. SIGN UP BY LEAVING PROMPTS IN A COMMENT TO THIS POST
Schedule: sign-ups are open from Saturday, October 7, to Saturday, October 21
At any time during this two-week period, you can join the exchange by responding to this post with a comment containing the following information:

Name: Your DW user name, a nickname or the name you'd like us to use for you, and any other identifying user names you'd like to include

E-mail: An e-mail address you check regularly (Or you can e-mail us at rs.small.gifts at gmail dot com to let us know how to get in touch with you)

Age statement: One of the following: (1) "I am over 18 or over the legal age in my country" OR (2) "I am under 18 or the legal age in my country, and I will neither ask for nor read anything with a rating over R." No age statement, or a falsified age statement, and there'll be coal in the stocking and all that.

Three wishes: Please give three prompts consisting of one word, one sentence, one quote, or one link to an image (no hotlinking!). For example: "first kiss," "warming hands by a fire," "umbrellas," "dawn on New Year's Day," "art for anything I've written," "a remix of anything I've written" "a story or art based on Splendid Wings (song by David Brown)," "cute MWPP-era icons"

Do not want to receive: List your squicks and pet peeves here: "songfic", "deathfic", "infidelity", "nicknames other that Moony and Padfoot" and what not. You can also note here if you have a preference for rating. Please be sure to note if you would not like to receive sexually explicit fic or art involving underage characters. School shenanigans not your thing? Let us know.

Am fond of: Insert your favourite things here: "sexually-confident!Remus", "Lying-low-at-Lupin's", "MWPP-era pranks". These are not prompts but a chance to tell your gift-maker a bit more about the types of things you like.

Throw in a wild card challenge: Offer an optional challenge for your gift-giver--a theme or a character or an approach you don't see in Remus/Sirius fanworks very often. Remus telling Sirius he needs to relax and have fun. An alternate universe set in another time or another culture. A fic written as a fairy tale. Your gift-giver may not opt to take up the challenge--which is fine! It's optional!--but let's spark some new ideas and have some fun with this request.

Copy and paste the handy widget thingy below to sign up:

* Remember, "small gifts" are small--stocking stuffers, more like it: short fic (1,000 to 3,000 words), art, icons, whatever people can give. It's the thought that counts! This is low stress, not a big bang! (we look shiftily at some of you...)

* All kinds of fanworks are welcome: not just fic and art, but icons, mini-vids, crafts, pod fics. That said, please do not ask only for art or icons or crafts in your request; in general, there are any more writers than artists in the exchange.

* Please don’t suggest too much detail in your prompts, give a plot outline, or ask for a novel -- these are small gifts! If you're curious about what folks have requested in the past, check out the sign up post from a couple of years ago.

2. COME BACK TO THIS POST TO CLAIM A RECIPIENT!
Claiming begins at 11:00 a.m. Eastern US time on Saturday, October 21. (That’s 8:00 a.m. in Los Angeles, 10:00 a.m. in Mexico City, 4:00 p.m. in London, 5:00 p.m. in Berlin, 7:00 p.m. in Dubai, and 11:00 p.m. in Shanghai. Australia-Pacific folks, let us help you out by claiming for you!)

***IMPORTANT***: Claiming closes after 24 hours. If you can't claim within this 24-hour window, please get in touch with your mods and arrange for a friend (or us) to claim for you. We're happy to help.

Please claim by responding to the comment that contains the request that you want. (You can leave a line like "I claim marysue's request #2"). One claimant per participant, please. Everyone creates one gift, everyone receives one gift, and we would like everyone to get something! Claiming operates on a first-come, first-served basis, so drop by as soon as you can to claim the prompts you liked.

If you finish and submit your first small gift, you are more than welcome to come back and claim again--we usually have a celebratory bonus round at the very end of the fest with second gifts.

3. TURN IN YOUR SMALL GIFT!
Due date: Monday, November 27
Please submit your work (BETA'D if a fic) as a post to this community. (You'll need to join, if haven't already). It will go into the moderation queue, and, depending on the number of participants, we'll reveal a gift every day until the end of the year.

THEN SIT BACK AND ENJOY THE GIFTS!
Posting begins on Friday, December 1
Celebrate the season of lights, the solstice, birth and new beginnings, the promise of renewal. Snow and cheery fires, tinsel and mistletoe. (Or blue skies and sunshine, for some of us.) Draw up a chair by that fire, settle in, and read....

Happy, happy holidays all around!

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2017,
mod post

An Apology and an Announcement!

“Padfoot?”

“Hmm?” Sirius asks, not looking up from his book. He’s been puzzling over an enchantment he came across when he and James tracked down Flint and Parkinson last week. He’s nearly come to the conclusion that it’s something they – well, Parkinson – invented. Flint couldn’t come up with an original spell if his life depended on it.

“Can you look at me?” Remus asks, somewhat plaintively. Sirius marks his page and looks up. Remus eyes him through his over-long fringe. He needs a haircut. He’s pulled off his robes and he’s in just his trousers and a white shirt, the sleeves rolled up to show his forearms. He looks a little rumpled and a lot pathetic. Sirius wants to eat him whole.

“Oh,” Sirius says. “Have I not been looking at you?”

It’s not like Remus to be needy. Correction, it’s very like Moony to be needy – it’s not like him to show it in any obvious way. If he’s going to exact any benefit from Moony’s apparent guilt, he needs not push too hard.

“Sirius,” Remus says, stepping closer. “I am sorry.”

“I’m listening,” says Sirius, looking away from Remus’ pleading face. He’s just this side of giving in and pulling Remus into his lap. That won’t do at all.

“It – well,” Remus stammers. He looks so delightfully desperate. Sirius feels the beginnings of desire stir. “I had every intention…”

Sirius schools his face into an expression of cautious interest and nods. He’s sure some part of Remus knows he’s taking the piss a bit, but his feelings were hurt and he’s not ready to let Remus out of having to squirm.

“I had planned to…and then,” Remus continues to stammer. “Well, I was going to be only a bit late with it, but the later it got, well, the more perfect it had to be. It was meant to be the best Christmas ever and what with one thing and another, and then it was February, and then, May, and then, well…”

“And now?” Sirius asks. This contrite Remus is unbearably delicious.

“So, er, happy… ” Remus says, raising his eyebrows until they nearly disappear under his fringe. “Equinox?”

“You’re even late for that,” says Sirius, noticing for the first time that Remus seems to have something in his hand.

“All right, then,” Remus says. The beginnings of a twinkle in his eye tells Sirius that he may have caught up that Sirius isn't completely furious anymore. “Shall we leave it at happy early Christmas? I reckon that I’m so late that I’ve worked my way around to be early again.”

“Your logic stuns me,” Sirius says. “What’s in your hand?”

“Can we try again? Can we have presents and lights and sweets and all of it?” Remus asks. He begins to extend his hand and Sirius grabs his wrist and encircles the warm, soft skin with his fingers. “Padfoot?”

Remus finally opens his hand and there, on his palm, is a very small box wrapped in gold paper with a tiny scarlet bow.

Sirius reaches out and takes the little box. “And you can hang up this early Christmas rubbish,” Sirius says, trying unsuccessfully to glare at Remus as he surreptitiously gives the box a shake. “That implies that this very small gift is also my present for this year and that's not on.”

“I would never. You’ll see,” Remus says, smiling that very Moony smile that means he’s up to something. Sirius decides at that moment that (in the spirit of the coming holidays, reconciliation, and new beginnings) complete forgiveness is really the best course of action.

*

Like Remus, we are very sorry for our delinquency. Also like Remus, we have plans. And we know that you, like Sirius, are very good-looking, charming, clever, and forgiving.

So, we are pleased to announce that rs_small_gifts will be back again this year for our twelfth year and that the final two bonus gifts and masterlist from last year will be up very soon.

Look for sign up information and posts coming your way. Sign ups will begin on October 7! We hope you will join us for another year of holiday cheer, Remus/Sirius style!

Cheers,

Maggie and Min