coaltide | This is Yuletide, everybody make a scene

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2020

This is Yuletide, everybody make a scene

I am the sock with the tear-away face

Low-effort with your gift and gone without a trace

I am the "who" when you call, "Who does an exchange without acknowledging their gift?"
I am the wanker blowing through your fics comments
I am the coalie dragging your letter at night
Filling your exchange to the brim with fright!

This is Coaltide!

Nominations: Tuesday 22 September to Thursday 1 October

Sign-ups: Friday 16 October to Monday 26 October

Assignments out: between 26 & 28 October

Default deadline: Friday 11 December

Assignment Deadline: Friday 18 December

Yuletide Discord for Hippos. Google Group for PHs. F_F wiki for history.

NYR Info | 2020 NYR Collection |

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They wanted an incredibly fluffy AU for an incredibly dark canon and nothing else. They DNWed many things that were intrinsic to the canon -- and moreover, the things I loved about the canon. (Like, fudging details here, wanting a non-ghost AU for a canon that's about ghosts talking about how they died and DNWing any mentions of death or an afterlife.)

Like I guess they were entitled to wanting whatever they wanted, but it sort of felt like they were asking for a fix-it for a series I'd loved as-is. I wanted to write about what actually happened in canon, but they made it clear that if I made any mention of any event that actually happened in canon (because they all involved the DNW), I'd be ruining their Yuletide. It's the only time I've ever defaulted.

I just saw that there are two separate MDZS cartoons in the tagset, amazing. (is AO3 not consistent about whether donghua goes into Anime or Cartoons? they were in different places, which is why I didn't see them at first.) but I guess to be fair there have been years when you could fill out your entire request slate with nothing but Much Ado About Nothing adaptations, and they all have the exact same script.

worst was the year when I got someone whose request wasn't just contradictory to the canon, it seemed like they really... didn't know what happened in canon? details changed but basically, "I love how X and Y are married and I would love a story about their married life" when they are flat out not married, not dating, this relationship doesn't exist. the canon has a lot of variants but that never happened in any variation I have ever heard of. I wrote a modern AU scenario in which they got married, and idk if the recip liked it but I really don't care because there wasn't anything I could work with in their request! I think they must have been new and just picked a fandom they vaguely remembered without thinking about it.

No, because I always game to get the specific request I want.

AYRT--That makes me so happy. Mostly Martha is definitely the obscure fandom of my heart and I felt like, "why not?" I'm such a devoted fan, I have refused to watch the American remake (No Reservations) out of a bizarre loyalty to the original.

I didn't game quite well enough one year and ended up with an assignment that was basically for 'a friendship story' about pretty much any of the nominated characters. With no further elaboration about what things they might or might not like to see in said story. So I spent a while grumbling to people about how that's not really a prompt - it's a genre...ish. I almost went completely gonzo on them and wrote a story where the characters are all friends doing Yuletide. And then there was an interval where I was going to write a [SOURCE CANON] + Alice in Wonderland fusion thing, because never let it be said that my brain doesn't generate ideas. But in the end that was too much story, so I just borrowed the good prompt from the letter I'd hoped to get - as I'd sworn I wouldn't do in the immediate aftermath of getting the assignment - and used that to hang a story about friendship around. And it got a pretty great response, overall, so I went away satisfied, haha. But I also got a bit more careful about gaming after that.

Oh man, I had one like that too one time. Not Yuletide, but someone requested Chronicles of Amber and DNWed incest, politics, violence, magic, shapeshifting (this was apparently a big squick), untrustworthy characters, characters lying to close friends or relatives, characters lying about their identity, amnesia and probably something else I forgot.

By the time I reached amnesia, I was like, ooookay, I can see from your DNW list that you've read the canon. Why exactly did you read it and what could you possibly want in fic?

I considered writing a fluff piece about Gerard (the only character who wouldn't run afoul of a untrustworthy characters DNW), but ultimately gave up and defaulted.

I've only really ever hated one assignment.

I offered A and B, the request was for A, and the sign-up details were just "A/unnominated C, no A/B" with no letter and it was for the fandom with the sparsest set of optional details in their sign-up. I happen to like A/C just as much as A/B, but I fumed for about two weeks before writing 1.2k of A gen with vaguely shippy references to C that they left a surprisingly enthusiastic comment on.

Most have been meh and a couple have been good (though I wish they wrote letters!). I need to get better at not having such high expectations of my assignment, so I then don't wallow in disappointment for weeks rather than getting on with writing my assignment and then have no time for treats.

My recipient wanted a fic about a character reconnecting with [religion]. Religion makes me fundamentally uneasy and this character and their relationship with religion is an extremely minor backstory in canon. I had been hoping for fic about the canon, characters' relationships, adventures etc. I wrote it, but definitely finished it as soon as possible so I could write treats for things I actually wanted to write.

I got one of those and tbh it remains one of my most popular fics, so there must be the demand for fluffy fix-its in dark canons. I always feel awkward replying to comments that focus on the fluffiness because it's 100% not what I would have written if it weren't a gift.

I'm jealous. Anytime I actively try to game it never turns out the way I want it to.

I haven't had an assignment I've hated, but I have had assignments where I've taken elements from multiple prompts and merged them into a story that was different from any of them but still made the recip happy.

Not for Yuletide, but for a different character-matching exchange, my recipient clearly wanted one prompt (and one specific ship) far more than the rest. It wasn't something I was particularly enthusiastic about, but I ended up writing 17k words for it and she seemed to really like it, so I was pleased about that.

Gaming for a gift (asshole method):
Pick 1 english language, nostalgiac, short, or big-for-yuletide fandom you want.

Pick 2 very long, non-english, non-western canons with no english translation available. the less-common the language, the better (ie basque > spanish for this). Nominate 4 characters no one in their right mind would request together or from disparate periods. Watch the signup summary page and swap out your small-fandom requests if any offers appear.

You may run amok of bucket lists.

Read your failure story and comment enthusiastically even if you have no idea what it's about.

Gaming for a gift (non-asshole method):

Pick 1 fandom you really want a gift in. ideally small enough to pick up if your writer matches to something else. Request no more than 2 characters.

Pick your next 2 requests from among the nichiest, smallest, hardest-to-write-for fandoms you'd be happy to receive a gift in. Request 4 characters for each, ideally characters no one in their right mind would request together, or characters from disparate time periods (ie, if dragonriders of pern: Menolly, Moreta, Debera, Kitti Ping Yung)

Gaming for a recipient
Watch letters and offer only what they've requested, only with the characters they've requested. If they request "any," on a fandom, replace that offer with an unrequested fandom. Watch the signups summary; if a request for that fandom turns up, replace your offer with a different unrequested fandom.

This type of thing happened to me recently with a non-YT exchange. It was a request for The Last of Us 2 and had DNW for any mention of character death (past, present, and even clickers), violence (wtf?) or angst. And asked for a scene of Ellie travelling on her way to find Abby in California after leaving the farmstead. Like...what canon did you consume?

I defaulted asap.

For symmetry.

Did you game for it? Did you get the response you'd hoped for?

My first Yuletide assignment. I didn't game for it (wouldn't have known to), and matched on one character from a tiny movie fandom. The recipient requested a bunch of prompts, including for a ship that had never even occurred to me. I had a blast writing the fic, ended up with a shiny new OTP, and the recip left me a wonderful, long comment. It was a really great first Yuletide.

the one I accidentally wrote a fan novel for which I've been picking at off and on for the last several years. I hope to finish it for my recip (she still likes the fandom!) someday

sounds exhausting, tbh

Terrible how?

There's been more than once that I had to unoffer a canon because of requests like this. I mean, on the one hand, yeah, ask for what you want. But on the other hand, when what you want is the opposite of what's in the canon, it's just so inconsiderate to your potential writer who might love the source material as-is.

It's a tie between the time I got my friend I had convinced to sign up for Yuletide for the first time and the year before last when I got the fandom of my heart that I desperately wanted to write (I didn't properly game for it, but I did stack the odds in my favor).

Transwank. It already started with Prim, shortly exploded (but got frozen too quickly to really take off) on ffa today (best hot take: people who DNW trans headcanons are gross and should be banned from exchanges), and I fully expect it to bloom into all its shitty glory once letters go live, and people start combing them for trans characters/trans headcanon DNWs.

Have you written your Yuletide letter yet?

Aw, that's great.

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