The Quarry

AG Secret Santa 2016

Enjoy the video, courtesy of Val :)

Note: The gift assignments are at the bottom of this post. If you haven't seen your gift and don't want spoilers, check your email before reading this!

Season's greetings, everyone!

It's been (a coincidental and exact) twenty days since we posted our first call for signups on December 5th. That makes it Christmas for most of you at the time of posting! Hopefully all your gifts were delivered safely by our trusted staff elves—they worked hard packaging and sending those presents around the world after Santa's sudden claims of retirement.

As you've probably guessed, this first official post on The Quarry is dedicated to the first Author Games community event we've heard of for as long as we can remember: AG Secret Santa 2016. To give everyone a bit of backstory, this event sprouted as an idea shot out by Sandy (forever-unfulfilled) in AG Café Bloo-Bucks. Initially meant to be a small-scale gift exchange between a few members of the chat, the idea instead garnered enough attention for us to turn it into an event for the entire community. AGHQ's involvement came about as a means of spreading the word to the rest of Wattpanem with the purpose of extending invitation to those outside of AG-BB. Was that a success? We'd like to think so. By the time signups closed on December 11th, we'd received twenty forms from writers across the community, eager to share the joy of Christmas. Special thanks go to those who helped spread the word!

To those curious as to how the process went, every participant was assigned a random name from the list of those who'd signed up. This name, to be kept a secret, was the name of the person they were to make and send a gift to by the due date—the end of Christmas Eve across the world.

For the sake of convenience and privacy issues, all gift exchanges were made online. Gifts were sent to AGHQ's email inbox where they were stored until the strike of midnight on Christmas Day. From there, we delivered an assortment of gifts ranging from e-cards to heartfelt notes. What really took our inbox by storm, though, was the number of cat gifts that went round! It now seems to be a mutual agreement that the AG community is home to a hoard of cat people. This is evident from the cat collage, cat Canva card and cat limerick we received. Coming in second was dog collages, of which we received two. However, the showcase of creativity didn't end here. Take the witty and sarcastic five-page scene of a certain someone's tributes at a Christmas gathering, for example, or the one-of-a-kind Prezi slideshow with writeups of the recipient's every tribute. Other particularly heartwarming gift were a video compilation of character profiles and hand-drawn digital art of a tribute. Let's not forget the dash of poems and sprinkle of music that came our way.

Also, I myself learned from opening my own Christmas gift that laugh-inducing cheesy messages in caps can be a cause of death.

All that aside, I won't keep you waiting any longer. What all of you really came for is below. Here are the long-awaited name assignments!

To: MyNameIsInigoMontoya (Katie)
From: SeizeThePi (Val)

To: SeizeThePi (Val)
From:MyNameIsInigoMontoya (Katie)

To: adonian (Karla)
From: lostwithmyfriends (Garrett)

To: lostwithmyfriends (Garrett)
From: adonian (Karla)

To: CAKersey (Carl)
From: forever-unfulfilled (Sandy)

To: forever-unfulfilled (Sandy)
From: WhovianHorseLover (Rose)

To: WhovianHorseLover (Rose)
From: magic_mockingjay (Clara)

To: magic_mockingjay (Clara)
From: -Raven- (Ray)

To: -Raven- (Ray)
From: LightOfTheMooneh (Moon)

To: LightOfTheMooneh (Moon)
From: MagmaKepner (Maggie)

To: MagmaKepner (Maggie)
From: aceh3x (Ace)

To: aceh3x (Ace)
From: annlu03 (Annie)

To: annlu03 (Annie)
From: EverydayAmazonBox (Lindsay)

To: EverydayAmazonBox (Lindsay)
From: annie1loves1you (Annie)

To: annie1loves1you (Annie)
From: ShayTree (Shay)

To: ShayTree (Shay)
From: TheCatKing (Joe)

To: TheCatKing (Joe)
From: TheShineOfThePae/Panem_ (Paella)

To: TheShineOfThePae/Panem_ (Paella)
From: josie-tee (Josie)

To: (Josie)
From: TheDarkHorse (Conner)

To: TheDarkHorse (Conner)
From: CAKersey (Carl)

Did any of you guess your Santas right? Comment your predictions below—we'd love to see what all of you've been thinking for the past day! This is a good place to leave your Santa a word of thanks as well :)

And that concludes our first official post! Wishing everyone a very merry Christmas once again. AGHQ hopes everyone's had a magical day of love, laughter and tinsel! <3

Time to *disapoof*

~Ray
25/12/16