coaltide | C.R.E.A.M

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2021

C.R.E.A.M

Coal ruins exchanges around me - spitey spitey fic y'all.

Sign-ups: Fri 15 Oct to Sat 23 Oct (~~Countdown~~)
Assignments out by: Mon 25 Oct
Default deadline: Sat 11 Dec
Assignment deadline: Sat 18 Dec
Reveals: Sat 25 Dec

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YuleBuilding | Two for One | Crueltide | Yuletunes | Yule Be First
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....and a Partridge in a Pear Tree!

Yuletide Discord for Hippos & Exchanges After Dark Discords for Namespace ~~drama~~ 18+ discussion. Google Group for PHs.

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Was it a better one?

Talk of Yuletide history sent me to Fanlore and then to this 2009 post telling recipients that they really ought to have a letter or they'll miss out on treats:

https://yuletide.livejournal.com/760328.html

I feel like you wouldn't see someone making a post to the comm like that now.

"Two stories I wouldn't be so worried about. But at this point there's nothing preventing someone with a popular prompt from getting a dozen stories - which would be hella awkward for both the writers and the recipient. The expectation of one-to-one reciprocity is simple and easy and works, and underscores that this is a gift exchange. The looming possibility of multiple writers flocking around one prompt would complicate things quickly."

Someone might get 12 stories! That's two and ten! And that's terrible!

I didn't write a yt letter until 2006, and it felt like a fairly new idea then.

And most of us were still calling them "dear Santa"s until 2007 or 2008.

However by 2010 I was already grumbling about how people were going way overboard with their emphasis on the letters and treats, so it built fast once it started.

If my recollections are correct, back in the day, things tended to come in a lot closer to 1000 words than they do now, which makes sense, as fandom, when Yuletide came along, was filled with challenges where you were supposed to write something of exactly 1000 words.

Your chances of getting someone you knew seemed higher back then. I think I knew almost everyone I got those first few years.

Mostly, I just remember the flop sweat last day panic of trying to get things in being much worse than it is these days. I must have been in IRC as far back as '07 or '08, as I remember people cheering me on in real-time as I uploaded my assignment one year (I'd had an unexpected family health issue that screwed with my schedule).

And yeah, I think it was noms that started during the High Holidays. Noms that, you know, extended far past them. Weirdest damn wank, that one.

The absolute ball-ache of posting pre-AO3, my God. Didn't you have to delete completely if you'd fucked something up and start again? I seem to remember doing that once or twice.

That fucking code was as robust as the JournalFen servers. Holy crap, it was a nightmare.

One thing I miss about the old site was nominations rolling over year to year, and IIRC you could nominate way more characters, which helped for canons with big casts.

I don't miss the archive falling over every year both for last minute uploads and the next day when everyone tried to read at once.

There was also some wank over the AO3 move when it was announced they'd import the old fics. There were a handful of users who were very much against it as they were anti AO3; I vaguely remember one of them having a meltdown over the term orphanfix, when it was suggested as a way to compeomise for those who didn't have an account.

Was the old site one of astolat's automated archives where you uploaded your own fic, or did you have to get the mods to do it? I was on a few fandom sites that used the latter and you had to send your files to the mods to upload, and god forbid you later spotted a typo or error as you'd have to send a new file and beg the mods to switch them over.

You could upload your own file, but if you made an error you'd have to ask the mods to replace it.

What I recall is that you wrote letters AFTER assignments were out, and you linked them to the page announcing assignments. They were intended to give your writer more guidance, nothing more.

history of yuletide butts

and yuletide bun buns

Make one major change obvious from the first few paragraphs. For the rest - Tease it out, bit by bit. Only provide info after the reader is wondering about it.

yes to all of this, write as sparsely as you can on the worldbuilding then get a beta to read it and they can help tell you where they need more info if any

Fun fact: Slave Bear of Care-a-Lot was written by Tamsyn Muir, later the author of The Locked Tomb series. Also, it was explicitly requested by the recip, so not coal in the dewclaws sense at all.

The fad I hated was calling them "Dear Yulegoat" letters.

/also old

And the recip was Rosefox.

+1

Process video and tutorial video are very different!!

I am LIVING for all this old fandom history/wank

I'm just glad I was around the first time NovaMist signed up with ten socks designed to match to each other and got outed because she lazily linked sock A's letter in sock B's prompts.

+1.

guess this year's collection icon is not to your taste

Oh man, I forgot that! That is right. And yes, the slave bear fic was not coal, but definitely one of the things that I heard about Yuletide prior to doing it the first time. Yuletide? Isn't that the exchange where someone wrote bdsm care bear fic?

I really hope you're talking about me, and I hope I get two fic. No one would ever be mad about this. You are doing good work, pls gift me both.

What’s the point in signing up with sock accounts that are just going to match to each other?

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C.R.E.A.M

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