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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I deliberately left a character out when I nominated the fandom because he was the one I found most boring and didn't want to write about. They requested one of the nominated characters, but went on about being surprised that Unnominated Dude wasn't there and gave only shippy and friendshippy prompts that paired their requested character up with him. I sucked it up and wrote them the friendship fic because I didn't want to default and they gave me nothing at all else to work with, but I was pissy about it.

I knew that the two nominations rule was a compromise with what the old mods wanted, but I hadn't heard that what they wanted was an even higher number of people needed to confirm a nomination. I thought we didn't know what the alternative was.

This was a couple years after they moved the whole shebang to AO3, right? And just as its popularity was peaking and participant numbers were getting bigger every year- I wonder if they started getting nervous about Yuletide hitting 2500 participants, 3000, and wanted to limit the number of people submitting nominations to make it easier and faster to sort through them. Rather than, say, add more tag mods they proposed that you could only nominate if you had a clean record of doing Yuletide for 3+ or 5+ years. (This is pure speculation on my part.)

I don't why they wanted to somehow reduce the number of nominations and fandoms in the tagset, but ita, it sure as shit wasn't because of tag bloat, server strain, or matchability.

https://yuletide-admin.livejournal.com/151740.html

That post where they walked the rule back also had a section written by astolat that was supposed to explain why it was needed. Mostly focusing on numbers, like there'd been 50 unmatchable people the year before and how that was too high as it was larger than the total of other exchanges. But IIRC some nonnies crunched the numbers and the percentages were about average for exchanges. Also there was some waffle about how too many nominations would lead to tiny fandoms getting lost and unnoticed and therefore less written, but honestly that always sounded like bollocks.

Afaik the mods don't go on here or on FFA and aren't exchange regulars in that sense. However, they've been running various single fandom holiday exchanges for several years, and they all seem to run successfully, albeit on a small scale. (Looks like the mods pick up a lot of PHs themselves.) I've only participated in one, but they do know what they're doing. Yes, it's more Tumblr-esque, and there's no DW. I honestly don't think they're out trying to nab Yuletide though, lol. Tbh they seem like good folk who're just doing their own thing during the holiday season, as they have been.

Rather than, say, add more tag mods they proposed that you could only nominate if you had a clean record of doing Yuletide for 3+ or 5+ years. (This is pure speculation on my part.)

Actually, in the beginning (well, not the very first Yuletide, for obvious reasons) you could only sign up for Yuletide if you had either participated the previous year (and not defaulted or otherwise sinned) or written a NYR. I started in 2005 and had to write a NYR before being allowed to sign up.

(also, they have certainly added a lot of tagmods in the past few years! Just look at the Maintainers on the current tagset - that's more people than have signed up for some exchanges I've been in...)

There are currently 761 fandoms in my "could possibly write" list and 0 in my "definitely want to write" list, so, no. :(

Yep.

I have four fandoms in my "could write for" list. In all likelihood, only one of them will be requested by someone who isn't me. It happens like this almost every year.

This is a weird thing to bicker about on an anon meme. It's not obvious that there is or isn't.

Out of the ~50 fandoms I know and would be reasonably comfortable writing for (at least after canon review), there are two or three I'm definitely offering no matter what. For the rest, I'm going to watch for requests, and add/remove/move them to my bucket offer depending on what people seem to be looking for.

+1 on 250 as cut-off.

I know everything is relative, but I haven't been in a fandom that has over 500 stories on AO3 in years. 1000 works is a big fandom.

I thought Emelan had, so I was surprised to see it on the list.

I have narrowed my list of fandoms that I want to request to 8, but it is so hard getting it down to 6. I've never had this problem before!

I have about 20 I can confidently offer to write for, but sadly none I'm genuinely excited about. I'm hoping for prompts that challenge me to stretch beyond my comfort zone to provide that excitement now.

When does the letter post get posted? Does it have to wait until Friday when signups open?

not counting old works being archived at AO3 if the nominator can prove they're older, to cover big archive imports.

Per your "rules lawyering" rule this would just make the fandom ineligible.

I haven't gone back to check, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't go up until the signups open.

SA Never mind, I just looked and it looks like in recent years they do usually go up at least a day or two before signups open.

They only wanted an issuefic AU that, even if I could write it in a way I was happy with, I would have been dragged over hot coals for.

I picked up an entirely new canon instead and wrote something we were both happy with.

I went and looked on

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I went and looked on <lj-user="yuletide"> to see when it was opened in previous years.

2019 - October 25, the day signups opened
2018 - October 5, with signups not opening until October 10
2017 - September 27, with signups not opening until October 1
2016 - September 28, with signups not opening until October 1

So if we were going by 2016-2018 rules, the letters post would be due right about now or overdue. However, if we're going by last year's precedent, then it won't be up until Friday.

The reason there was wank about this was because the letters post used to be unofficial and “anyone” could post it, but the spreadsheet volunteers were territorial about it.

Now only morbane can post it iirc and she doesn’t have a set schedule.

Can you write for songs/albums? Provided you keep an eye on the requests lists to make sure that people are both requesting them and not requesting insane shit for them, they give you more options.

same hat!

And now smacked down by Morbane, apparently.

I have two that I'm definitely going to be offering (because I offer them every year) - one of which I'm actually genuinely excited to offer based on the nom'd characters this year. (And if I match on neither, but the prompts are good, this is the year I SWEAR I'm writing treats!)

I have a bunch of things that I'm potentially excited to offer (my degree may actually be of functional use this year!) but that I'd need to do research for so I'm hesitating over.

There's one fandom that I emphatically CAN offer...but as I know precisely who's requesting it and what she wants, I probably won't (not for anything coal-worthy, I hasten to add; I'm just not ready to deep dive into that side of the fandom again)

The rest are the usual collection of "eh, I can do that" stuff which I think I'm going to reserve judgement on until I see some requests.

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This is Yuletide, everybody make a scene

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