Deliver Us From Coalptcha

[chock_coal_ate_bawks]

PM me if there's transphobia (or racism or homophobia etc) and I'll deal with it.

Nominations: 12th to 21st September
Sign-ups: 10th to 21st October
Assignments go out: Between 22nd and 25th October
Madness opens and prompts are visible: After assignments
Posting deadline: 18th December at 9am UTC - may be the 17th in your time zone
Story reveal: 25th December
Author reveal: 1st January

Ao3 collection: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/yuletide2018
Letters LJ: https://yuletide.livejournal.com/1315417.html
Letters DW: https://yuletide.dreamwidth.org/139157.html
Tagset/letters app: https://tagset2018.firebaseapp.com/

Latest regular view: https://yuletide-coal.dreamwidth.org/10641.html?page=1000
Latest flat view: https://yuletide-coal.dreamwidth.org/10641.html?view=flat&page=1000

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

help your neighbourhood coadie feed coins into the hosting machine if you'd like to at https://ko-fi.com/karanguni# - the app has finally trickled over our free hosting limits for 2018 /tiny optional plug

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you, Coadie! Hopefully you just got some $ from me.

Letter questions

[(Anonymous)]

So after reading some of the letter critiques I was wondering what coalies thought was a good amount of canon familiarity to assume when one is writing a letter?

Do you go in as though you're introducing a new person to the fandom or assume that if someone is looking at that section of your letter they're already somewhat familiar?

Does it change depending on fandom size, mainstream popularity, easy availability?

Re: Letter questions

[(Anonymous)]

In sections about the fandom and what I like about it, I assume minimal knowledge or that I’m introducing a letter browser to the material. Then in the section with my prompts, I assume the person offering knows the entire canon (or the entirety of what is available).

Reading Habits

[(Anonymous)]

Do you read outside of your usual fandoms at Yuletide? Do you read your recip’s work when deciding what you’ll write for them?

Re: Reading Habits

[(Anonymous)]

I’ll read fandoms I never look into beyond exchange times, but I don’t click the Yuleporn or Crueltide tags and read stuff just because it has tags I like on them, if that’s what you’re asking.

No, I have never read a recips fic.

A little piece of Yuletide history

[(Anonymous)]

I was scrolling through the Yuletide LJ’s archives today, because I couldn’t recall how nominations and signups worked when the exchange was still on yuletidetreasure.org. And I came across this: https://yuletide.livejournal.com/208600.html - the beginnings of nominations as we know them today! I find it interesting how this decision is what shaped how most exchanges now also work on AO3 in terms of nominations.

Re: A little piece of Yuletide history

[(Anonymous)]

God yes this brings me back. Remember when the 'tag set' was literally just a giant txt page of everything that had ever been nommed, with like every character for every canon because people could just show up and suggest a canon with all 20 characters and it would be in?

Final offer adjustments

[(Anonymous)]

With less than 24 hours left for signups, how are your offers going? What have you added? What have you unoffered? What's got you looking at that 1,0 fandom and saying "Nope"?

Re: Final offer adjustments

[(Anonymous)]

Dithering over whether to un-offer The Good Place.

It's my only offer that has more than two requests, and I'm offering a combo of characters that should be fairly popular. There's such a high chance I will match on it, and idk that takes some of the fun out of it, I guess? And what if I match to someone requesting Any and then they don't want the ship I want to write?? And instead they want worldbuilding or something?? That would intimidate the crap out of me.

UGH THERE ARE SO MANY REQUESTS IT'S LIKE A SCARY LOTTERY AM NOT SURE IF WANT TO WIN.

How's Your Dental Practice Going?

[(Anonymous)]

Anyone socking up this year?

*Reminder to double check you do not anonfail in this thread.

Re: How's Your Dental Practice Going?

[(Anonymous)]

My dentist signed up before I did, but none of the hygienists are joining in this year.

Awwww....

[(Anonymous)]

For things you're disappointed/sad about.

Re: Awwww....

[(Anonymous)]

I was over the moon about someone offering my 1,0 request the other day and now that offer has disappeared. No one else has requested the fandom and my letter's been up for a while, so I wonder what changed.

I get that everyone's shifting offers right now. I did, too, after I realized that I wouldn't be confident writing the excellent request in this one fandom, and maybe this other offerer didn't feel as confident as they thought they should about writing this fandom either. But I'm still a little :(

quick (possibly stupid) matching question

[(Anonymous)]

If I offer two characters in a fandom, would I potentially be matched to someone who only requested one of them?

Re: quick (possibly stupid) matching question

[(Anonymous)]

Yes.

Nervous

[(Anonymous)]

I am weirdly nervous about sign-ups closing...I have no idea why. I finalized my offers and requests earlier this week. But I still am??

Re: Nervous

[(Anonymous)]

I'm the opposite! Was super duper nervous about signing up because writing a letter seemed like the hardest thing in the world but now that sign-ups is closing and I put my letter up yesterday I'm feeling relieved.

Last Minute Discoveries

[(Anonymous)]

Suddenly a request has appeared in a fandom I offered, just as I was fretting over whether to change my offers to be more matchable, hooray! A fandom I’m requesting lost an offer though, sadface. What are you discovering as you check the summary and letters?

Re: Last Minute Discoveries

[(Anonymous)]

Someone I like finally posted their letter. They requested a short fandom and now I'm watching it because our tastes usually align well and their prompts for it are amazing. Yay for unintentional recs!

Give us hope, coalies!

[(Anonymous)]

Raise your hand if you put a fandom in your bucket offers that is currently showing as 0 for the offers column on the sign-up summary.

Re: Give us hope, coalies!

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, 1 fandom! And I'm eyeing a few 0 offer fandoms for treats after I see the prompts since there were no letters to convince me to put them in my offers.

Yuletide is slowly dying

[(Anonymous)]

Fewer participants than even last year.

1573 and now 1533.

Re: Yuletide is slowly dying

[(Anonymous)]

Can't tell if serious or sarcastic...

Stats before matching

[(Anonymous)]

So before assignments go out, how do your numbers look?

I have 18 possible writers in 2 fandoms and 11 possible recips in 3 fandoms.

Obviously there may be bucket offers I can’t see, and some of those recips may be asking for characters I didn’t offer...

Re: Stats before matching

[(Anonymous)]

2 possible writers in 2 fandoms, 1 possible recip in 1 fandom.

[(Anonymous)]

Unless one of my fandoms is in someone's bucket list, I have one possible writer, and that's iffy as I'm requesting a rare pairing. Looks like I'll probably be a pinch hit again.

[(Anonymous)]

sa
Whoops. That was meant for the Stats before matching thread.

Vampire Chronicles

[(Anonymous)]

Anybody else surprised that this is in the tagset? I never had the impression that it was a small fandom, just in hiding and banned from the Pit of Vole's on account of Anne Rice being Anne Rice?

Oh well...

Re: Vampire Chronicles

[(Anonymous)]

well its a pre-ffnet/lj fandom. i bet most of the fic were in zines and single fandom archives. pair that with the fear of lawsuits and ffnet probably purging a lot of stuff after the ratings rule and viola small fandom

Biggest Yuletide fandom ever?

[(Anonymous)]

I was looking at the request/offered summary and it made me think about this. Is there any stats or data that any of you Yuletide historians have to tell us the biggest ever Yuletide fandom? I know that the requirements have changed over the years, so it wouldn't be a level playing field, but maybe just in the last few years since they've ironed out the new rules (no ten year old fandoms, etc)?

The Good Place has 66 requests/90 offers. Is that a normal rate for the big for Yuletide fandoms? I'm thinking of years past when Hamilton was big or The Martian a few years back. Just curious and thought I'd bring the question to the group.

Re: Biggest Yuletide fandom ever?

[(Anonymous)]

Harry Potter in the years yt allowed rare pairs

Femslash Festivus

[(Anonymous)]

mlravenwrites: I'm not going around the post policing whether or not your letters are femslash-y enough, but please be considerate and do not ask for genderbent versions of male characters in canon, e.g. asking for always-a-girl!Conan the Barbarian paired with Valeria.

If you're bending into f/f, that's femslash. Whether you think that's "considerate" or not (wtf?).

Re: Femslash Festivus

[(Anonymous)]

Fuck off.

Bets on When We'll Get Assignments?

[(Anonymous)]

Today? Tomorrow?

Re: Bets on When We'll Get Assignments?

[(Anonymous)]

Probably not today. They've just sent out the "you have no recipients, please change your offers" emails and I think the mods will give them some time (24hrs maybe?) to respond.

If you were Supreme Emperor of _coal

[(Anonymous)]

What wank would you ban? And what wank would you replace it with?

I would ban all off-topic wank, especially sexuality wank. I would replace it with the most on-topic wank of all: should we combine Yuletide and Yuletide Madness?

Re: If you were Supreme Emperor of _coal

[(Anonymous)]

We should combine them or we should specifically ban all treats from the main collection, putting them all into Madness instead. The current arrangement is stupid.

[(Anonymous)]

Let's just call it the "canonically woman f/f exchange" and move on.

[(Anonymous)]

Canonically female sounds better. Or at least canonically a woman. Woman is a noun, but canonically is an adverb that modifies a verb or an adjective.

Biggest fandom you offered? Zero-requests fandom?

[(Anonymous)]

Which fandom that you offered has the most requests? Did any of your offered fandoms get no requests?

Re: Biggest fandom you offered? Zero-requests fandom?

[(Anonymous)]

Most requests is for The Left Hand of Darkness, which I'm pretty jazzed about. Seven requests!

Nobody ever did request My Side of the Mountain, alas. :(

App Questions

[(Anonymous)]

What do you do to show which letters have been linked at the sub-challenges? I can never remember or find instructions on the app for it, though I feel like I once saw it. I promise I will write it down this time.

Re: App Questions

[(Anonymous)]

It's out of date this year, all the Easter eggs!!! I'll update them and then post instructions

/coadie

[(Anonymous)]

Why does transwank happen so often here?

[(Anonymous)]

Possibly because it's banned on FFA so people who want to wank about it have to do it here. They can wank about bad letters and drabbles in different places.

Please take pity on my ignorance

[(Anonymous)]

The app? What is it? What does it do? How can I use?

Re: Please take pity on my ignorance

[(Anonymous)]

https://tagset2018.firebaseapp.com/

lists tag set & links letters. once requests are public those will also be linked.

you can add your letter and search for other letters. click the heart to favorite a fandom or letter. it's used before signups close to help narrow down offers & after for finding people to treat.

Yuletide Misses

[(Anonymous)]

What yuletide fics have you looked forward to that never materialised? I'm still sad that coalie who talked about writing a HP Lovecraft inspired Dark is Rising fic about Jane returning to the Greenwitch and Tethys never came through.

Re: Yuletide Misses

[(Anonymous)]

all the people who talked about writing treats for me who didn't

all the treats I talked about writing then didn't