Trouble at the headquarters

[futurepm_mod]

Greetings, fellow Arashians.

This is an urgent message from Sakurai Sho's office. A most unfortunate incident has taken place today, when one of our staff members accidentally left their livejournal account opened.

Sakurai-san found out about the Arashi fandom's fic exchanges.

At first, we feared that he would have an angry outburst in the middle of the campaign's headquarters–to protect everyone's safety, the umbrellas are now hidden in a locker labeled "skydiving gear"–but that wasn't the case. Sakurai-san took it strangely well, and even bragged that the pairings including him were so popular that he didn't need an exchange of his own. "If I want to read exchange fics about me, there are plenty of them in the others' exchanges," he said with one of his signature smirks. "I'll just read the ones in those."

But that was a lie.

In this very moment, Sakurai-san is sulking in his office, refusing to practice for his upcoming speech, where he'll finally announce his candidacy for Prime Minister. "I'm not popular enough to get elected! I can't even get an exchange of my own!" he whined and whined to his assistant for hours.

After a staff meeting, we have reached the conclusion that in order to get Sakurai-san to work again, we need to organize an exchange for him. A very clever staff member pointed out that there are a couple of on-going exchanges at the moment, and also that authors might find it hard to complete a fic on time for Sakurai-san's birthday. There is barely a month and a half left after all!

From our brainstorming session, we have come up with a few solutions to this predicament:

- If we do organize an exchange, sign-ups will be opened for a very short time (around four or five days). Posting date will be moved to Valentine's Day (February 14th, 2017), since it's not that far from Sakurai-san's birthday. That and he might die of embarrassment if he gets all those fics on that date (we love seeing him flustered). On January 25th, we will do another activity (picspam, a fanfic written by our staff members, sneak-peeks from the participating fics, and Sakurai-san themed games were the alternatives listed by our staff, but a final decision has yet to be reached).

- If the exchange is turned down, we will still organize a Sakurai-themed event that involves fanfiction.

- In both cases, we will recommend a word limit for everyone's convenience (note that this will not be compulsory, and writers can submit longer fics if they are inspired enough to do so).

Another clever staff member reminded us that perhaps fans might not want to participate in another exchange or in a Sakurai-themed fic event. As Sakurai-san's campaign managers, we are convinced that people will be interested in celebrating Sakurai-san's birthday with us. On the other hand, overconfidence is never wise. Sakurai-san would scold us if we chose any strategy without making sure that we aren't overlooking any details.

Therefore, we have decided to leave the decision in your hands.

[Poll #2058865][Poll #2058865]
On December 9th, we will inform you what alternative has been chosen.

Thank you for your attention and cooperation.

-CJ & CN, Sakurai Sho's Campaign Managers.