coaltide | Delay? Deny? Depose

Fandoms requested by pinch hitters

2024 Paris Olympics Opening and Closing Ceremonies
Akkadian Empire RPF
Band Sinister - K. J. Charles
Bedwyn Saga - Mary Balogh
Beetlejuice (Beetlejuice Movies)
Boston Public Library Statues
Boyfriend Material - Alexis Hall
Brave (2012)
A Charm of Magpies Series - K. J. Charles
The Chronicles of Chrestomanci - Diana Wynne Jones
A Civil Contract - Georgette Heyer
Cyclone Series - Courtney Milan
Death and Taxes (Video Game)
The Decameron (TV 2024)
Enchanted Forest Chronicles - Patricia Wrede
England Series - K. J. Charles
The Expanse Series - James S.A. Corey
The Faculty (1998)
The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
Gothic (1986)
Hero x Villain Series - dannyphantom.exe (Web Series)
響け! ユーフォニアム | Hibike! Euphonium
光が死んだ夏 | Hikaru ga Shinda Natsu | The Summer Hikaru Died (Manga)
Ib (Video Game)
Idylls of the Queen - Phyllis Ann Karr
InCryptid - Seanan McGuire
Invisible Inc. (Video Game)
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne | Phantom-Thief Jeanne
Kushiel's Legacy - Jacqueline Carey
Lilywhite Boys Series - K. J. Charles
Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers
The Lost Boys (1987)
Much Ado About Nothing - Shakespeare
NieR: Automata
NieR Gestalt | NieR Replicant | NieR
Paradise Killer (Video Game)
无双 - 梦溪石 | Peerless - Mèng Xī Shí
Perry Mason (TV 2020)
Persuasion - Jane Austen
Plants vs Zombies
Ready or Not (2019)
Rimworld (Video Game)
Rivers of London
Road House (1989)
Satanic Panic (2019)
Slay The Princess (Visual Novel)
Star Wars: The Acolyte (TV)
Still Wakes The Deep (Video Game)
The Sting (1973)
Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
Tactical Breach Wizards (Video Game)
ただいまおかえり | Tadaima Okaeri | Welcome Home (Manga)
千秋 - 梦溪石 | Thousand Autumns - Mèng Xī Shí
ツルネ風舞高校弓道部 | Tsurune: Kazemai Koukou Kyuudoubu (Anime)
Turner Series - Courtney Milan
Twelfth Night - Shakespeare
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl
The Victorian Way (Web Series)
Wayward Children - Seanan McGuire
Withnail (Withnail & I)
X-Men '97 (Cartoon 2024)
イエスかノーか半分か | Yes ka No ka Hanbun ka | Yes No or Maybe? (Light Novel Series)

Who has gifts and who doesn't

No gift yet:
fried_extracrispy_trenchcoat
galaxyofroses
redsnake05
Skylark
tinystreetlamp

Has at least one gift:
Acorn_Squash
Bottomfeeder
PaperBagGhost
StarCityRebels
shoshanna_mio
tigrrmilk
tucuxi

Here's the prompts post:

https://yuletide-admin.dreamwidth.org/120399.html

me... but i might be done.

I'm still writing. This treat just will not end!

And posted!!

Me. I am a fool and I couldn't bear to edit my assignment until now, after I submitted a full draft.

I have two treats half-written and I'm going to have to save them for NYR. I know madness exists and honestly I'd rather post these works on anon first, but I can probably make people happier with comments than these treats haha.

NC 1.5 hours to go, frantically writing all night, but I think I'm done? I'm going to give this story one last look, and then I think I'm saying "Good enough!" and going to bed.

Done! Night night, everyone.

just finished, time for sleeping

Just finished and I’m calling it a ding dang day.

I just gave mine another look and realized I'd missed a VERY important tag. So I'm glad I checked again.

Me. I've got to fix this last part. Why do I end up doing this like this every single year?

Alright, I think it's as good as it's going to get. My brain certainly is not going to get more functional at this point in the evening. Night all!

I pre-napped this year so I’m going to be awake for the collection opening!

You can leave the bulk of your editing until Christmas Eve, I said. It’ll be fine, I said. Then came the inevitable Christmas Eve family drama… I may be stupid.

Finished editing right under the wire. Thank god. This treat will have to wait for Madness, though. Sorry, treat recip.

Currently at 1745 with 1 hour and 10 minutes to go.

c'mon 1750! I just want a nice round number lol

Getting so close! 1747...

1758... dammit, almost 1760!

Unacceptable! We must ask Morbane to reopen the collection.

OTOH, 1111 fandoms, though...

almost butt time

butt butt

Almost 100 works are only visible if you are logged in. Is that usual?

All visible for me, you just had to let it cook.

Sure. Lots of authors only post archive-locked.

It seems a lot more this year than usual, but I don't know if that's actually true or it seems true only because I am paying more attention than usual. I'm always logged in so something being archive locked is really easy to miss.

More and more people have been archive-locking this year as more people are getting angry about AI scraping (in fact there was just another scare this week with a paid app that was scraping to put up AI audiobooks of AO3 fic.)

I managed to finish a treat at the last minute but struggled so hard to post it to the collection that the deadline passed before I could. I know there's still madness, but.

I'm sorry, coalie

How did you do?!

Someone else wrote a much better version of the exact same premise of my fic but tbh I'm just glad I get to read it! It's very good. Two cakes and all that.

As for my own gifts: I think I won Yuletide :)

my gift is kind of trash on the whole but also full of lines that rock hardcore in the specifics, so honestly I am counting it as a win

as a non-shaker, i somehow managed to completely mess up the fandom for my gift lol. massive surprise for me this Yuletide and i am LOVING IT

Unexpectedly, I got a robot action figure like I wanted! Ooo, the limbs are articulated. Wait, wait, it transforms on voice activation???

SC

This should have been down one thread, whoops. The excitement for robot transformation overwhelmed me.

I am literally turning green with envy right now.

Honestly I'm baffled. Like, it's a 1000 word minimum exchange, it's totally fine to write 1000 words of plotless fluff. But what are the additional ~500 words of set up for a plot doing in here, when the plot isn't going to happen? Even if you planned to write something plotty, realised it wasn't happening and cut down to the fluff version, surely you would take the plot set up out again? IDK, Chekov's Gun is unfired and I feel weirdly cockblocked by it.

I feel like a lot of the shorter fic I've read so far is like that this year. I usually read the shortest fic first because a good short fic is worth its weight in gold, but there's a lot of fluffy nothings so far.

My gift is one of those. Just over a thousand words and nothing happens.

I had a Yuletide gift like that once and yeah it's a very weird feeling. Like, there's stuff about it you can find to like, but the poor structural editing sticks out like a splinter on a rough wood finish. Then the author rambled in the AN about how the rest of the story would have gone if they'd made it a longfic, which only highlighted the incompleteness and honestly they did not need to do that.

i use a screenreader to read fics and my writer used a whole bunch of weird text and effects in their fic which makes it impossible to parse. probably should have dnwed it but i genuinely didn't think anyone would do anything this crazy.

Maybe mention it the mods? I do sometimes do weird text things, but I also always have a no-markup version and I would readily be able to swap it in or add at as a second chapter if asked.

That really sucks, coalie. For what it's worth I think it would be totally fine to comment saying you use a screenreader and asking for a plain text version.

Oh shoot, I was in a rush and didn't check that on mine. What's the best way to do, like, italicized/telepathic speech for a screenreader these days?

CYRT - italicized is fine as-is if you can pick it up through context clues that the character is telepathizing. the problem in question here is full paragraphs of straight-up zalgo text

Oh whew, I know at one point they were saying avoid i tags for more than a couple words but I just do them by muscle memory still and had a vague memory they're more ok now.

Whole paragraphs of zalgo is annoying as hell even without a screenreader I can only imagine. Condolences, coalie.

(Might want to at least mention the screenreader in the letter next year if you're ok being open about it, though that won't stop everyone.)

OMG that's what that weird text is called! I have wondered for years. Thanks, coalie.

Somehow I already have a recip comment and they loved the story. Pretty thrilled because I struggled with the assignment - their sign-up was pretty sparse (though not by Yuletide standards), but I took the one prompt and ran with it and it seems to have paid off.

My own gift, on peeking at it, looks very promising, and I have a pretty good idea who wrote it.

Ahhh they wrote my favourite dumbasses so well!

Me too!

Fantastically! The rarer fandom I was most hoping but least expecting to get, and great characterisation as well. I wish I could think of more things to stuff in my comment without repeating myself because I feel it does not look proportional to how much I honestly loved it.

No one wrote for any of fandoms for the fic and treats that I wrote, which is a new thing. Not good or bad, just different!

Same here. And I wrote for one fandom with >5 offers, too!

I can’t say this in the comment, but easily the best Yuletide gift I’ve ever received, and probably in my top 5 exchange gifts of all time. :)

My gift is so good that I feel like I might vomit

my fic is only okay - i think they missed out on characterisation of, uh, the main character. good on the surface! but reeeeeally missing some depths.

This is my first year writing >1 fic and I’m glad I did. I’m really second-guessing myself on one of the fics I wrote, but at least I know the other one I wrote made my recip very happy and that’s all I can ask for, tbh.

Yeah, I always try and write multiple fics for Yuletide. It takes a bit of the weight off waiting for reactions if you're not entirely focused on stressing about how one specific fic in particular will go down.

I feel like my writer offered Any and was surprised to get me and not the usual ship requests :/

Managed to get something with a DNW I didn't realize I have. So uh. Yay.

Argh the worst. Been there, coalie!

Overly flowery in a way that might work with a longer effort, or a different more unique plot, but as this is just a short puff of smoke the actual story ends up being devoid of substance.

It’s good at setting a mode, however that gets derailed by being just a strange choice for these characters and fandom.

A good effort. It feels like they were writing outside their comfort zone and didn’t hit on anything close to an actual story before the deadline.

For example: a new bike, a generic scented candle, $5.35 left on a gift card for a store you don't shop at, an ugly sweater knitted by Aunt Agnes....

An old bike that someone has done really good detailing on, but only on the frame, and left the bald tires on the wheels.

Scratching my head over this. Old drawerfic with conspicuous newly written bits?

I'm guessing their fic gets canon right but doesn't go anywhere? Bald tires are still rideable on, though, so even that doesn't really fit.

A little box containing a tiny, perfect pendant, in a color I didn't know looked good on me until I put it on. Extremely charmed.

A lumpy, too-small sweater with more than a few missed stitches, which I don't mind because I'm so excited that someone actually went out of their way to use the weird knitting pattern I asked for that I'm going to go around showing off my hole-y lumpy sweater to anyone who will listen.

Aww, this sounds lovely.

I was expecting a perfunctory box of chocolates. I got a fancy chocolate fountain (it came with an unhinged collection of things to dip in it, but it's still a fancy chocolate fountain), and a tiny perfect pony made of chocolate.

Picture cards of the action figures I did want, along with the one action figure I didn't ask for.

A warm and cozy blanket, simply made but with colours I like, and I am happy to have it.

I hoped I’d get a new coat but thought I’d get a shirt instead. Lo and behold, I get said jacket, PLUS a scarf, and gloves, and a woolly hat, and they all match to boot!!

My favorite flavor of cheesecake, delicious and well made, except there was some rushing to get it in the box and it set crooked.

Knitted washcloth with a few dropped stitches that's been under the tree for a while; it's a nice color but I wish they'd taken those extra weeks and knitted a scarf (or at least gone back to fix the dropped stitches).

Like someone gifted me a copy of a book I already love but highlighting all their favorite passages and adding little snarky comments throughout.

A brand new bike with all the bells and whistles! I wasn't expecting it! And it was fantastic.

A sweater vest. It's pretty obvious that my giver meant to knit me a sweater and ran out of time to finish the sleeves, but it's fine, I like vests and the color is pleasing.

Not the elaborate character doll I'd hoped to get, but a lovely soft plush version of the character that is so sweet and cuddly and snuggly that I never want to put it down and just want to cuddle it all day! <3

A box of chocolate bonbons filled with a variety of unusual but well-curated flavors.

Action figures of my blorbos ordered from a shady dropshipper, cute but definitely the bootleg versions.

Gift 1: comfy pajama set that has nostalgic references in the design

Gift 2: "I’m not sure this exists but like if you give me this I’ll be intrigued enough to probably like it" (receives gift) "holy fuck it exists now (and isn’t bad)"

Multiple treats in madness that were posted on or after December 25: WHERE DID THESE COME FROM they’re tiny but they’re so cute. Like little plushies or figures.

The exact weird little trinket I asked for. I'm putting it right on my shelf and gazing happily at it.

A note about how much they love the particular sweater I asked for, and a copy of a similar knitting pattern that leaves out the difficult colorwork.

They forgot to take off the tag giving away that they bought it late at the dollar store, but within the selection there, it was thoughtfully chosen and nicely wrapped.

Where's the wank?

The wank must flow.

I think I got Untherius' fic.

Oh no! Is it weird or just weirdly boring?

Tell us more, coalie

Congrats! The yuletide equivalent of biting down on the little plastic baby in the king cake!

"Being Eaten Feels Good For Cakes" "(don't ask how that works it just does)"

freeform tags are fun actually

Is this the cannibal omegaverse thing? Surprised to see that in YT.

Looks like the requester specifically asked for it and for the prompt that got filled, so may they have a very happy Cakeversemas.

Still doesn't mean it should be in YT.

I can't possibly imagine something more fitting for Christmas than cakes and cannibalism.

Okay, Hannibal.

Lol you’re going to need to unpack that reasoning, coalie.

it literally does, though? like that is how yuletide works? people ask for weird shit and they get odd faeces pooped out for them

go find an actual wank for us, no need to manufacture

Now my brain is mixing this up with the Two Cakes thing.

From this thread I was prepared for bonkers, but I was not prepared for over 30k of bonkers. Props to the author, that is impressive.

Doesn't seem like anyone commented on it. :(

I started it and it is pretty well written, but I felt weird about commenting on it when I don't actually know what is meant by MILGRAM (Music Videos).

This, I think:

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/488543.html?thread=2937322335#cmt293
https://milgram.fandom.com/wiki/MILGRAM

Thanks, coalie, that makes sense!

Unfortunately this is a kind of fandom I don't vibe with at all (audiovisual is a difficult sell and I don't like puzzles) but at least I know more about what I don't know now.

Ahhhh you tease!!! A fade to black!!! Something else I have to add to my DNWs.

You can't force people to write smut for you, coalie.

DC

I don't mind fade-to-black but I don't think DNWing it equals demanding smut. It just means don't start what gears up to be a smutty scene and then don't follow through. It's easy enough to write shipfic without smut OR fade-to-black.

I would not have a problem with "DNW: fade to black" as a writer, but it would 100% mean the recipient was getting gen.

+1 I would absolutely only write gen.

Cyrt

I don't write gen, so they'd just be getting shipfic without any scenes where things get steamy. Which is probably what I'd be writing anyway.

(Though if it's not Yuletide and the exchange matches on ships, "I'll just write gen" is not a viable approach to begin with.)

This. Sometimes fade to black feels right for a story and if I'd rather just write gen if that's my alternative.

As someone who enjoys writing and reading foreplay more than outright smut, I'm bugged by the phrasing of "not follow through".

CYRT

Fair. But that's one reason why the DNW would be useful - because it might simply be different ids clashing. I like UST and I like smut, but I'm meh about foreplay without smut, so just having foreplay and then nothing does feel like teasing and not following through to me while for someone like you, it's the main event.

you wanna dnw fade to black????

Yeah this seems a bit bratty. Totally get the frustration, but maybe look on the bright side and the fact that you got shipfic to begin with.

Oh, I appreciate the fic, I meant it to be more humorous, I do have an imagination that I can continue the scene after the fade to black.

I just found it kind of funny, it was really building up to smex it seemed and then bam, c*nt blocked LMAO

*By "I meant it be more humorous" I was referring to my original comment.

CYRT

Gotcha, coalie. For me it depends on the execution but I can totally see how some executions feel a bit awkward.

i think people understand the funny part, and the pushback is to "im going to dnw this" because that sounds like a dumb idea

Nah. That would be a helpful DNW.

(To clarify, I'm not OP. I do think that if they don't like fade to black, DNWing it would be a good idea, tho.)

A DNW like that sounds fine with the caveat that, as other coalies mentioned, a lot of creators would err on the side of not writing anything sexy at all rather than guessing at what the recip might consider to be fade to black.

I would want some hella clarification on what DNW fade to black meant. Like, would ending the scene on a moment of tension/definitive action where sex was sure to follow count, or is the recip talking about foreplay on the couch and then they move to the bedroom and don’t show that more like it? I would need to know that to be comfortable writing anything even vaguely sexy for them, because I love smut but sometimes it balloons a word-count or feels gratuitous, yanno? Sometimes actually not even until you’ve started writing it, like I wanted to hit x beat and I did it before the smut even happened, huh.

It feels pretty straightforward to me.

I would say if it’s a fic focused on the characters getting together and having sex it should have the sex described. If there’s foreplay and it’s getting hot and heavy it should have the sex described.

If it’s about two characters buying a house it doesn’t need to have a sex scene unless the whole point of the fic was having sex in the new house in which case it should have the sex described.

If they are fighting an evil clown in a space station and the characters are a couple. Avoid having the sex scene because that clown will kill them and thats a permanent fade to black.

PERMANENT FADE TO BLACK I'm shrieking

Adding "evil clown kills couple in middle of sex scene (unless requested)" to my DNWs now, thanks

Next year I'm adding "evil clown kills couple in middle of sex scene" to my requests

I recommend the movie Cabin in the Woods for an excellent set-up for this.

AYRT

I guess I’m thinking of it from a ‘person who writes a lot of plotty stuff’ perspective. For example, I’ve written lots of fics about beginning and then ongoing relationships. I might write the first time sleeping together out as a full smut scene, but not each subsequent time. I guess I’d just want to know whether the person was DNWing and all fade to black content, or if it was a ‘don’t leave me with fic blue balls jfc’ kind of request

How do we feel about them? Personally I despise them because the majority of my recipients who have done this never come back. I guess it’s more polite than outright rejecting? Or ignoring? D;

Don't say you're coming back if there is a chance you won't be; I'd rather a short comment and a surprise long comment later than a surprise no follow up. But otherwise, I think they're fine. Having said that, I am also in the "Thank you for writing!" is a complete and positive comment and indicative of nothing camp, and I know some coalies freak the fuck out over comments like that.

+1 I've only ever had people saying they'll come back not coming back. I'd prefer a very short comment, and if it weighs on their mind for reasons** then they can come back and leave a longer one that I don't expect.

Practically, I've never received a placeholder comment. Hypothetically, I'm torn.

Complete lack of comments bugs me because I usually assume they didn't like it or, at worst, didn't even read it. For that reason, I would vastly prefer a placeholder comment like "I loved this and will come back later to talk about it in detail!"

If it's just "I will comment on this later, busy now, sorry", then it's eh, whatever, but honestly still more polite than no comment even if they never come back.

At one point I left a very excited placeholder comment and it turned out the fic was hard to enjoy because it contained something I didn't DNW but should have. I still commented, but the mismatch between my initial excitement and the faint praise afterward made me feel awkward.

Most recips who've left me placeholders came back, and I always came back for my own, so I think they're a nice way to quickly indicate that you see and liked the gift if you know you won't have time for a substantial comment until later.

Strongly disagree that they're an alternative to rejecting, or more polite than rejection. If you hate your gift, please reject it rather than saying "I will come back later". That's not only disingenuous, it also gives actually placeholder comments a bad name.

+1

Honesty is the best policy. (Sometimes. In this case, anyway.)

+100

I almost always placeholder if I can't comment the same day the collection opens because I want my writer to know I've seen the gift and I'm super excited about it. Just because some people suck and never come back doesn't mean that all placeholder comments are suspect or some ridiculous coded rejection.

I wouldn't, however, placeholder to say that I'd read and enjoyed and would be back with a longer comment. And ime any such comment I've had has never had a follow-up.

I leave a kudos for this purpose, it says ‘hey I saw your story and maybe I liked it. I’ll be back to comment’

But I have a weird thing with the comment box, it feels heavy so leaving a kudos just feel easier and less stressful.

Yuletide requires comments so leaving a placeholder can be seen by some as a get out of jail free card type of thing.

Yuletide doesn't require comments

WHAT.

????? yuletide has a million noncommenters

+1

Yuletide highly recommends comments but the exchange is a holdover from years ago with different expectations than modern exchanges.

dc

While this is true, most newer exchanges also don't require comments. Yes, it's generally considered impolite not to comment, but it's also considered impolite to leave a placeholder comment and not return - in terms of breaking any rules, it doesn't make a difference; leaving a placeholder is no "get out of jail free" card because there's no actual consequences for not commenting in most exchanges.

My feelings are conflicted! I see the point of 'better just leave a short comment without promising more, then come back later with a longer comment if you can'. OTOH I have received a short placeholder comment from a recip who never came back, and there is something in knowing they liked it enough to want to say more even though they didn't manage to.

Yep. I don't really mind never-followed-up placeholder comments too much. The vibe is basically, "Here's a short comment to say I really liked it! It's not short because I was struggling for any specific nice things to say, I'm just disorganised!" Which on balance I probably still appreciate slightly more than just the short comment on its own.

+1

That's exactly it. And as a disorganised person myself I can relate a lot.

I often write long fic for Yuletide so I get placeholders often, and I value them even if the person doesn't come back. "This looks amazing and I'm excited to dig in when I have time" type comments fuel me on Xmas morning when I can't expect to get anything else for a while. Of course it's a bummer when the recip doesn't show up after that, but by then I'm on to the next fic.

They make sense for like, a 10000+ word fic where it's reasonable to be really excited about the title and summary but say you might not be able to grab the time to read it undisturbed on Christmas day (especially since longfics in the collection sometimes wait longer for feedback from anybody for that reason.)

For something you could reasonably read in < 10 minutes without having to follow a plot, leave a short comment that's still fine as a short comment and you can come back with the longer one later as a surprise.

Huh. The only kind of fic I'd rush through in 10 minutes is a fic I dislike, and any short comment I'd leave on that would be all I have to say about it.

When I like a fic, even a short fic, reading it takes time and I need quiet and attention for it.

(As an author, I also strongly prefer either a brief placeholder that indicates that it's a placeholder followed by a longer comment later or just the longer comment later with no placeholder. A short comment right away that doesn't say it's a placeholder and longer "surprise" comment later wouldn't be fun for me.)

Okay. Most of us would love a surprise second longer comment.

We hatesss them, preciousss.

They're bad

I feel like I've mostly had people make good on their placeholder comments, but I usually feel like I'd rather people waited until they were ready to read the fic and comment then. I got an odd placeholder comment this time around, we'll see how it turns out.

I’ve only gotten one and the recip never came back so I don’t like them.

Hate them. It's fine if you just take a little while longer to write a longer comment, if you're going to do so. Or write a short comment in the first place! I just finds placeholder comments annoying.

Anything good?

The Eastern Promises fic, I love EP smut.

I liked this Wallflowers fic with a Changelings fusion: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/yuletide2024/works/61415281 It's Evie Jenner/Sebastian St. Vincent. I wasn't sure the fusion would work but I really enjoyed it.

I still find the Top 5 Rat Movies I Made Up hilarious and I love made up fandom meta, so I really enjoyed this Legends of the Great Below fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/60424000/chapters/154238182

Anything bad?

The Zelda/Columbo crossover appears incredibly earnest but the result is, while not strictly bad, sadly disappointing.

Anti-recs always backfire on me, because now I have to add this fic to my reading list because I admire the ambition of such a crossover.

The eleven-chapter Folgers coffee story is clearly Untherius.

oh nooo

but the summary makes it sound kind of good, can anyone report back?

I was just looking at it like...who wrote 15k, eleven chapters of Folgers incest fic that is lord of the rings themed? The summary sounded interesting, but when I clicked into it, I was pretty baffled.

Oh wow

i checked the recip's prompts and they did explicitly say they'd like a fantasy au, so it probably is a good faith gift tbh

Is it a fantasy AU or is it just fantasy crack though?

The Ella Enchanted fic. It's not bad in the sense of poor grammar or sentences that don't make sense. I just don't understand who the story is targeted at. I've also only seen the movie so I could be mistaken but it feels like they just killed Ella off screen and included an OC? Google isn't helping me much. Maybe it's what the recipient asked for so I guess I'm not one to judge. If I wasn't so lazy I would dig through the requests and check.

Ignore. Tried to do this on mobile and utterly failed. Will try again.

Are you thinking Lela is an OC? That's just the name she uses at the ball to see Char again. The fic is a little snippet of Char reacting to seeing her (in a mask) and knowing something is pulling him to her and not why. I definitely recommend reading the book. The movie shares a name and a basic premise and absolutely NOTHING else.

The fact that two fics are tagged Harry Potter lol

One's for the video game, which I would say is cheating but there have been Star Wars games in yuletide as well, and the other appears to be some kind of setting fusion thing and not actually HP.

Still cheating!

Crossovers are allowed.

And they shouldn't be. Because Batman and Harry Potter in Yuletide are ridiculous.

The Ella Enchanted fic. It's not bad in the sense of poor grammar or sentences that don't make sense. I just don't understand who the story is targeted at. I've also only seen the movie so I could be mistaken but it feels like they just killed Ella off screen and included an OC? Google isn't helping me much. Maybe it's what the recipient asked for so I guess I'm not one to judge. If I wasn't so lazy I would dig through the requests and check.

It's a book-specific thing and, without delving into further spoilers, no one has been killed off. I only skimmed the fic so I can't speak to anything else, but it seems like a weird thing to anti-rec if you aren't even familiar with the source material. The movie is comically different from the book, and that fic is for the book.

You're right. My bad. I should have asked this in a different section. I had thought I'd done my due diligence by googling Lela of Bast in relation to the book but apparently not!

Oh coalie...

Also read the book, it's lovely.

+1

It's a perfectly good fic. Not the best in the collection, but I'd be satisfied with it.

To my author: I'm giving you the Yuletide gift I give every year by not reading my fic for the first few hours of the exchange. Is that three different typos you fixed after the collection opened? I didn't see them. Is that a once-missing sentence that has now mysteriously reappeared? News to me! Did the total wordcount on this gift change since notifications went out? I guess I'll never know why!

You're welcome.

I really hope I wrote for you because I very clearly did a really bad job at editing this.

I had to shorten the quoted text in my comment on a story because I noticed a grammar mistake.

lol thanks. im definitely currently re-editing the entire second half.

The tags on my fic changed drastically from yesterday to today.

I sincerely hope you are my recipient and thank you.

That'd be a total anti-gift for me, but okay, be smug I guess.

Fart

+ 0.5

I don't think there's anything wrong with doing that, but as a writer, it's not helpful or desirable to me. If I had to pick, I'd rather have a recip who had been a waiting excitedly for reveals since the gift appeared and then go to read it as soon as the collection opens. (That's me. I'm that person.)

DC this is usually my preference too, but this year I finished a treat really late and didn't have time to add the copious author's notes I wanted to share, nor to fix the stupid typo in the summary which I only noticed when editing it the next day to add the notes, so thank you, recipient for being chill and waiting a few hours.

You are my favorite coalie.

This is actually really sweet but if I was your author you’d still get the same fic, because I am determined to not look at that fic again (I’ve edited it within an inch of its life) until I’m looking at it through the eyes of a reader who’s left a comment. (I also don’t want to inflate the hit count artificially, I want a genuine sense of how many people have clicked)

If you look at your own fic logged in, the hit count won't increase.

enjoy yuletide you judgmental assholes

But I heard him exclaim as he drove out of sight...

...Happy Yuletide to Coal, don't choke on your spite~

Cheers!

yeah judge mental as fuck

I rule this, I rule that.

Peace on earth and goodwill to mankind, everybody

talkin bout yourself

I hope Santa brought you a Shift key and a huge bag of ~~dicks~~ punctuation marks.

Rec stuff here

My fic I wrote has three views and no kudos or comments. Maybe I should have defaulted...

is it relatively long? if so it might take readers time to read the entire thing before kudosing and commenting :)

Relax, coalie. I have 40 fic open in tabs right now, and it is going to be days before I read all of them and have a chance to kudos and comment. I am not the only one.

It's on my read later list. Sorry about the scare.

This early, I always assume hits are just people opening something in a tab to come back to.

Generally the hits to kudos ratio on AO3 is 10/1. Also the collection’s only been open for six hours? I really wouldn’t worry about it.

...where is your fandom in the alphabet? Maybe people just didn't scroll that far yet.

Trust me, that's a whole lot better than being early in the alphabet and having one or zero hits, especially when people are saying they've opened a bunch of tabs for everything they want to read.

it's christmas we're busy! I'll read it tomorrow, promise.

Maybe you shouldn't have signed up if you're that needy.

Or you could let people vent, weirdo.

If it's the one I have open, I'm utterly delighted by everything I have read thus far, but I am also juggling multiple family members and a failed quiche.

You shouldn't juggle quiche, that's probably why it failed

this is the silly yuletide wanks i love

It's Christmas Day!

/deep sigh

Someone wrote in the fandom of my heart, but it's for the new canon Sue and it's full of run-on sentences. I'm going to go sit in the corner and be sad.

^ Elisabeth Sparkle

LMAOOO

do you have a specific way of approaching the whole collection or do you just dive right in and start reading immediately.

Open tabs for all rtmi fandoms, go through fandom tabs to open all rtmi fic. Read all rtmi fic, gift for me last.
Fulfill family obligations.

Re-read gift, comment.

What does RTMI mean?

Relevant to my interests

I keep trying to read it as “Right up my alley” instead which is close enough but not at all what those letters mean.

I keep getting stuck on RTFM and think it's Read The Manual, Idiot even though that never makes sense

CYRT

High fives! I also sometimes start to read it as RTFM too.

Reverse alphabetical order for all the fandoms I evenly vaguely recognize.

I start in the middle of the alphabet and work down, then back to the beginning. Open some tabs until I have a lot, read anything that looks really good right away, repeat. Try to comment on anything I like reasonably well, usually burn out and don't finish the collection.

* Go through alphabetically opening fandoms in new tabs until it feels like I have Too Many Tabs.
* Then actually look at all the fandoms I've opened and open any relevant fics, so I end up with an even worse case of Too Many Tabs.
* Then sort all the fics I have open into order by wordcount, and start reading with the shortest first.
* Keep reading until I've cleared a reasonable chunk of the tabs and the fics I have left are all long enough that I'd rather save them for later.
* Repeat.

It me. (I'm on H now.)

I do it very similarly, except I usually read in order of date rather than length.

LOL yep, that's me!

I go through letter by letter. For each, open up all fandoms of interest, then all fics of interest, then read them in no particular order. Rinse, repeat.

i usually first open all the fics in the fandom(s) i received because i try to always leave kudos/comments on those at very least. then i go through the whole archive and open every fandom that looks interesting, then through each fandom page to open individual fics.

I pick a random letter and read for all the fandoms I know in there. Then pick a new letter!

I used to go alphabetically but I get distracted easily and I felt bad that I didn't get to later letters.

Go to the collection, start on page one and read all the fic from canons I know, or unknown canons with interesting summaries, then repeat with madness; it usually takes me the week to work my way through. The only ones I might miss are the repeat redaters.

I used to go through the fandom list, open all the fics that were RTMI and then read in a random-ish order, which took me about three days back when Yuletide started and made my family furious because they barely saw me over the holidays.

Now I just read my gifts, have a glance at the collection and realise there's nothing for me to read. My interests have become too specific over the years. I would love to read more, but the things I want to read only exist when I request (or write) them.

gift first, then start at either the beginning of the alphabet or the end, open up a million tabs and then start reading

My gifts, any other fic in fandoms I requested, usually by then Madness is open and I make an effort to read most of what I know in Madness, then I just sort of dip in and out via the fandoms list until the recs and wanks start showing up

Gift first, then sort the collection by word count, go to the last page, and read the shortest fics first.

Similar to other coalies, I open all fandoms I know (a few at a time, like all Ms, all Ms, etc.), only I don't open the fics that look interesting, that leaves me with too many tabs open. Once I've got a few fandom tabs, then I open fics one by one and read them, alternating fandoms to get to all fics without burning out on a single fandom, and choosing whatever I feel like or have time for at any given time.

Check the list of fandoms for any fandoms that seem interesting, open all of those in tabs, open all fics from those in tabs to read.

Sort all works alphabetically, then filter for f/f and open anything that looks interesting that I haven't already seen.

I read and comment on my gift first, but I don't go through the others in any kind of methodical manner.

"The world is changed. I feel it in the crema. I feel it in the grounds. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it. It began with the forging of the Great Beans. Three were given to the Dutch Bros; immortal, wisest and chipperest of all baristas. Seven to the Tim Hortons, great brewers and bakers of the northern snows. And nine, nine beans were gifted to the race of Coffee People, who above all else, desire caffeine-buzz. For within these beans was bound the strength and will to govern each race. But they were all of them deceived, for another bean was made. In the land of Puget, in the fires of Mount Tahoma, the Dark Lord Starbuck forged, in secret, a master bean to control all others. And into this bean he poured his cruelty, his Pumpkin Spice, and his will to dominate the coffee trade. One bean to rule them all."

I'm not clicking on that without some nog.

I want it to be good, but I'm scared to read it and discover it is not

SC

Okay I caved and started reading the first chapter and. It's pretty meh so far. The prose is clunky and odd, but not the worst I've ever read. I may continue...

Someone's trying too hard to win Yuletide this year.

I don't think they were trying to win, they're just doing their thing

This feels like one of those fics that could either be amazingly done or not so much... I guess I will report back.

Not gonna lie, I’m feeling good about this one!

Honestly, if you're going to do a Folgers fantasy pastiche, it's got to be Game of Thrones or nothing.

Looks like that’s what the recipient prompted. Not this.

Eh, Folgers Children of Húrin has potential. This is just the wrong Tolkien story for it.

I'd read that.

+1, someone should totally write that.

I didn't expect it so early but I already got happy recip comments on half the fics I wrote.

They're all for unpopular-even-for-Yuletide fandoms so I expect precisely zero of them to end up on anyone else's radar or get shared in rec lists, but I'm very happy with myself for now!

Atlas Shrugged??????

The recip's request is very funny, I recommend reading it!

The recip's request is dead on. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't looked at the book, but yeah. Somehow or other Ayn Rand has these two hero types running around referring to each other as the only man they've ever loved. It's not even subtext.

It's been 20 years since I read it, but yeah, those two were VERY UNSUBTLE and I don't think Ayn Rand knew she was writing gay love but she definitely was. Dagny brought them together but they didn't have to move in together when she left them.

fuck me i just found a fandom i REALLY want to request in and now i have to wait THREE HUNDRED SIXTY FIVE DAYS for it

Candy Hearts nom are open for two more days.

I won't get this in CH, it's too small.

Ask for it in Candy Hearts anyway. One, it’s possible if you ask for it, and not if you don’t. Two, if you ask for it now, then in a few months when you ask for it in another exchange, someone can go “oh, that thing, it caught my interest in Candy Hearts and now I’ve had time to consume it”.

You are more likely to receive it if the other things you request are also rare and you talk them up enthusiastically. Like the other coalie said, sometimes it takes seeing a request go by a few times for people to pick up the canon out of interest.

this is a good wank

I've gotten Yuletide-sized canons for Candy Hearts/Chocolate Box every year it's run, I think, some of them with less than ten fics.

+1

Ideas for good YT fandoms only occur in the middle of the writing period for me.

If the only good comment you're going to get this year is your recip comment, would you rather have:

-a short but enthusiastic one within an hour of the collection opening
-a medium-length but thoughtful and specific one in the evening of the first day
-a very long amazing one on the 31st

I’d hold out for amazing

Very long amazing one. Don't care if it's on the 31st or a month later.

I'd take medium and thoughtful, that's as much effort as I really want and I'd hate a full week's wait.

Medium-length or long and amazing. Although tbh it depends a bit on how long the fic is. For anything less than 5k, then medium-length and thoughtful is absolutely fine with me.

I'd go for medium length a bit later, I don't really need a super long one and get antsy a few days in. But the almost immediate short one just feels like they're getting an unpleasant task done with as fast as they can.

Any of those are fine.

Either 2 or 3.

I only ever want medium and thoughtful. Long comments are kind of a burden to reply to.

As long as it seemed like they liked it and I hadn't let them down I'd be cool with whatever

I've gotten enough non-commenting recips that literally any of these would make me happy. (Please, recip, comment this year!) But a long, gushing one on the 31st would be a delight.

Time zones are weird. I’ll be fine with anything between b and c.

Delay? Deny? Depose

Pinch Hitter Prompts

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3 hours - who's still editing?

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Any final guesses for total yuletide fics?

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