Last updated: 5th of October, 2024
The Secret Solenoid is a secret santa-style event. It works like this:
You submit your preferences, prompts, and various information on the application. With this info, we get to work assigning you two people: the one who has received your prompts (your gifter), and the person who you will make a gift for (your giftee). Your giftee and gifter will be random, so rarely they may be the same person! After the applications close, we'll start processing the spreadsheet, matching everyone based on preferences. Soon, we'll send everyone their giftees via the matchups. No one will know who their gifter is. You create the gift, do the check-ins, post the gift on the assigned date, bam! Secret Solenoid.
This info can be found on the schedule page.
You can join if:
Any kind of content is allowed as long as it is properly tagged! We will not police ships or kinks that people create. This means you have to clearly tell us the stuff you do not want to receive or write about!
Things that are not allowed are: OCs, personal AUs, or reader-inserts. General fandom AUs such as mermechs or humanformers are fine to request.
Related to this, please write the characters' personalities as they are in canon, and draw them as they appear in canon, unless your giftee requests it. This isn't saying "don't draw in your art style", just don't redesign the character.
For writers, you'll be posting to AO3, and submitting the work to the Secret Solenoid 2024 Collection. For artists, you can post to any of your social media accounts. The main requirement is that your gift is publicly visible somewhere!
For participants posting anonymously, please check here.
Yes! You can go ahead and indicate this in your sign-up form. We'll contact you via email when the matches go out
Anonymous participants aren't required to join the event's Discord server if they don't want to! In this case, we will communicate via email.
Regarding posting, artists will send us the files for their art so we can post it on their behalf, and writers should add their fic to the AO3's Anonymous collection, which will make the gift anonymous even once we reveal the event's AO3 collection.
Please reach out to us as soon as possible so we can fix it!
NO, not in public. This is a secret santa in a medium fandom, if you talk about what you're making in a public place, there's a really good chance your giftee or their friend will see it and know, and it'll ruin the surprise! (That, and you'll be breaking the rules.) Caveat: if it's in a small, personal discord server with a few friends or in DMs without your giftee, go ahead.
Contact us as soon as possible. Ideally you should be asking this within the first few days after we send out the matches and prompts! We will need to arrange a swap, which means that this should occur before people have started work on their gift.
This is why we ask that participants wait a few days before starting in on their gifts. We'll let everyone know when all the prompts are finalised so everyone can properly start.
Contact us as soon as possible.
If you have to drop out or cannot complete your gift in time, this means we'll have to arrange a pinch-hitter to make a replacement gift. We need this to be done as soon as possible to make it easier on the pinch-hitters.
If you feel you can complete you gift, just not within the required timeframe, go ahead and post it when you're done, but it will not be part of the event or AO3 collection. We're sure your giftee will appreciate the surprise extra gift! :)
In either case, the last possible dropout date is the final checkpoint, the 23rd of December, which is nine days before the final posting date. If you drop out after the 23rd, you will be banned from participating next year.
If you are having problems, we may be able to help by asking for clarification from your giftee, or answering questions. Mods will not be providing betas.
You should contact the mods to let us know. You have to keep your work hidden until the appropriate posting date. You can either post it manually at said time, or queue it.
Writers can submit any completed works to the AO3 2024 Secret Solenoid collection, which will remain unrevealed until January 1st. Artists can queue their art to post on January 1st on Tumblr and Twitter. If you have any problems, message the mods on the Discord server, or, if anonymous, email us.
Yes! The one previous to ours ran from ~2018-2021. We picked it back up in 2023. The current organisers have no contact with the old organisers, nor any control over the old Tumblr (@secretsolenoid), Twitter(@secretsolenoid), or AO3 collections. All are still viewable, so go ahead and check them out!