Coal Rivalry

[coalcube]

All the things Coal said, running through my head.

Thursday 25 December: Madness collection works reveals (9pm UTC)
Thursday 1 January: Author reveals, end of event (9pm UTC)

Mini-Challenges:

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Chromatic Yuletide | Unconventionyule | Wrapping Paper | Babytide | MultiLingYule 

Yuletide Discord for Hippos & Exchanges After Dark for namespace drama 18+ discussion.

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Comments

Deanonymitygate, cont

[(Anonymous)]

What an unexpected gift that was.

Re: Deanonymitygate, cont

[(Anonymous)]

Yuletide Admin Post:

Hello, Yuletiders–as you may have noticed, the anonymous setting on the Yuletide collection, which should hide all author names until reveals on January 1st, does not seem to be working as expected, and shortly after our planned works reveals, we had an unplanned reveal of author names. We’re very sorry for this unexpected breaking of anonymity!

We’re reaching out to AO3 to help us resolve the problem. In the meantime, we have updated all works manually, and author names should now be hidden again. If you notice we have missed any, please reach out to us privately at yuletideadmin@gmail.com.

Again, our apologies–and we hope you enjoy the collection!

Yuletide Madness is scheduled to reveal at 9 PM UTC on 25 December, but this may be delayed if necessary to ensure author anonymity.

https://yuletide-admin.dreamwidth.org/132119.html

[(Anonymous)]

♫ On the first day of Yuletide, the Yulemods gave to me broken anonymity... ♫

[(Anonymous)]

That scans so pleasingly well.

[(Anonymous)]

Does anyone have an up to date invite link for the Exchanges After Dark discord?

[(Anonymous)]

Should be good indefinitely. (https://discord.gg/s2fbynvTKx)

How did you do?

[(Anonymous)]

Talk up (or down, I guess) your gifts, coalies!

Re: How did you do?

[(Anonymous)]

I was an early pinch hit and was expecting to get fic for my five minute fandom but instead someone wrote me the backstory fic for a fandom I've been asking for for like five years, and it's really, really good. :DDDDD

[(Anonymous)]

Meanwhile, I still don't know who wrote for me, because they pre-emptively put their work in the Anonymous collection and didn't get caught out like the rest of us. Well played, Mister Bond!

[(Anonymous)]

oh wow, a genius move.

Maybe something for all the Madness authors to do proactively today!

[(Anonymous)]

I got a very sweet and mild fic for my very wild signup. It's cute but not exactly what I would have expected. (I do like it!)

My signup: crazy ideas, hard kinks, op-ins, go wild!

My gift: mildest of fluff, zero risks

[(Anonymous)]

Not everyone desires to “go wild,” even if it is permissible.

How did your recipient like your story?

[(Anonymous)]

Mine clearly hated her gift, but a month or two ago she complained in a server we're both in about having requested the fandom at all, so I was ready for that.

Re: How did your recipient like your story?

[(Anonymous)]

No response yet, but it's super early, so it's cool! ;)

Actual Coal (or, what were they thinking)

[(Anonymous)]

Post works that don't work at all.

Re: Actual Coal (or, what were they thinking)

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not reading this fic because this A/N put me off enough to close the tab so I don't know if it's coal but woof

Hello, and Happy Yuletide 2025 😊
It's been some time since I participated in this exchange and I confess I was a bit rusty, especially in the 'offers' part 🙈 I didn't remember how specific one had to be to avoid receiving prompts one is not ready to fill...
The fact is, Lina and Xellos have never been a pairing in my eyes, even though I like them both a lot. So I did my best to write a piece about them - from Lina's pov - as a gen one shot, toeing the line between the pull of rationality and the fascination of power.
I hope you like it 🙏🏻
Also, please know that I haven't watched Revolution and it's sequel yet.

How Long for Longfic

[(Anonymous)]

Recipients of longfic: How long does it (usually) take you to read and comment?

Re: How Long for Longfic

[(Anonymous)]

If we're talking over 10k, it takes me the entire anon period, however long that anon period is. I used to leave happy placeholders saying one or two things I liked and then come back with other comments but so many people complained on memes about placeholders that I stopped and just comment at the end.

Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

I saw that you added 400 words after the collection had already opened. Not cool.

Re: Dear author

[(Anonymous)]

And you're mad enough to post about it twice?

[(Anonymous)]

at least my butt is anon

AI witch hunt starting in three, two, one

[(Anonymous)]

So who found AI fic under their or someone else's tree?

[(Anonymous)]

i got a fucky ducky fic
im lucky
to get fucky ducky

[(Anonymous)]

I want to comment on 50 Yuletide fics during the anon period, but I'm not feeling a lot of the fandoms. Hope the rec lists help, once they start coming in.

[(Anonymous)]

I always feel weirdly rude commenting on fics before the recipient has but if I don't comment the second I read something, I completely forget to come back and do it.

Describe your gift!

[(Anonymous)]

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....

Re: Describe your gift!

[(Anonymous)]

Aunt Agnes heard I collect sheep figurines but missed the memo that they're mostly cartoony comedic ones and instead got me the most goth of satanic-looking evil goat statuettes, which is honestly pretty cool but not quite what I was picturing when I put it on my list.

Coal comments (coalments?)

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for telling me I have a typo in my story. No thanks for not elaborating further, making me frantically read through my story on mobile at 6 AM trying to find it.

Re: Coal comments (coalments?)

[(Anonymous)]

lol that's impressively evil

Dear Recip

[(Anonymous)]

I'm so sorry I gifted your treat to another person! I'm gonna blame bad eyesight and the extreme similarity of l and I in serif-free fonts.

Re: Dear Recip

[(Anonymous)]

Aw, been there before. It happens.

[(Anonymous)]

Me, as I go through the fandoms in alphabetical order and only read the shorter fics now, saving everything above a certain length to come back to later: "But WHY is nobody reading my longfic from a fandom up the back end of the alphabet yet???"

Madness Collection

[(Anonymous)]

is now open! What's looking good, coalies?

Re: Madness Collection

[(Anonymous)]

https://archiveofourown.org/collections/yuletidemadness2025

[(Anonymous)]

tfw there is a whole-ass collection of fic to read and i am not interested in anything other than my gift. boo.

Recs & Anti-Recs

[(Anonymous)]

What's good? What's not?

Re: Recs & Anti-Recs

[(Anonymous)]

I liked all the Knives Out fics.

[(Anonymous)]

There appear to now be 1538 works instead of 1539. I wonder what got removed.

[(Anonymous)]

I think somebody mentioned seeing a duplicated fic? Can't find the comment now, but I've certainly seen that in past Yuletides, so maybe someone just uploaded an accidental extra copy and then deleted it.

Italicization Appreciation

[(Anonymous)]

My Yuletide gift had a lot of italics, and I liked seeing them every time they appeared. Thanks, author!

Re: Italicization Appreciation

[(Anonymous)]

You're talking about the thing you wrote yourself and you're mad some people hate your italics.

pettiness

[(Anonymous)]

I hate when I'm reading an otherwise decent fic and the author uses 1) unnatural dialogue tags, 2) uses a word as a dialogue tag that is not a manner of speaking, 3) does not properly break paragraphs between character A's dialogue and character B's response

Re: pettiness

[(Anonymous)]

I hate when a fic has the doubled line breaks. If you can't figure out how to fix or avoid it, take the time and have the pride to learn, don't just live with it! In my day we posted plain ascii files with hardcoded line breaks and still managed better formatting than half of AO3. :p

(Also if you've never read a novel length ascii fic with 64 characters per line and italics coded like *this* in *every* line, stop complaining.)

[(Anonymous)]

I always like checking out the ongoing recs that appear in the Yuletide_Recs bookmark collection:
https://archiveofourown.org/collections/yuletide_recs/bookmarks

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you for the reminder this exists! I need to go through later and update my bookmarks.