Is the fandom ready for another fan event? Or are we RAflashed out? Valentine’s Day is coming up, soon, so I threw the suggestion out there that maybe the blog world would like to follow the tumblr RArmy’s lead and organise a Secret Valentine of their own. I’ve been discussing this behind the scenes with Agzy, and we came up with a couple of possibilities of organising such an event. I humbly present these before you and will ask you afterwards to take part in a poll in order to a) gauge interest and b) decide on the preferred option.

The idea behind both Valentine’s initiatives is to create a little occasion for the community to hone in on itself and spread the blog love by focussing on individual bloggers. To that end interested participants send in their name to me, and I will assign a secret Valentine to them, using the ever-reliable principle of coincidence. There is no buying or crafting presents, no postage or calculating of despatch times, no costs attached – not counting the time you may have to spend engaging (secretly) with an as yet unfamiliar community member and conjuring up your contribution. A specially created blog site will be created to collate the posts for posterity and access. However,  the two concepts differ a little from each other, so I am giving you a mini-overview via bullet points:

• Compose a post about your assigned Valentine.
• Can take any shape – personal letter to the recipient or post, ficlet or picture edit dedicated to the recipient
• Publish on your own blog

Pros and Cons:
– Only available for active bloggers
+ possibility to be RA-centric
+ no need to conceal identity or style
-+ not anonymous

• Write a Valentine’s letter to your assigned partner
• Send to organiser
• To be collated and published only on specially created Valentine’s blog

Pros and Cons:
+ fan-centric
+ open to bloggers, commentators, tumblr-bloggers
-+ anonymous

As a recap: The Secret Valentine is more inclusive and may foster the community spirit more than the Surprise Valentine because it is open to commentators and bloggers alike. The Surprise Valentine may provide a bit more creative scope and needs less behind-the-scenes work.

So what’s it gonna be, if it’s gonna be anything at all? Vote, if you please.