Yuletide.

[icarus]

I want to do Yuletide this year.

Actually, I've wanted to do Yuletide every year. But this year I don't have finals/other obligations that make it impossible.

Thing is, I find Yuletide's sign-up process bewildering. People link me to Things That Explain This and ... here's what I see:

"... now before you do the quasimodorio you need to push the figarot button -- but fear not! It's easier than it sounds! All you need do is yiggle the yaggle and if it doesn't work, hit it with a hammer."

Is it really that bad?

Comments

[bridgetmkennitt]

It's not. The basic thing is find fandoms you want to request (3-4) on the tag set and fandoms you want to offer, sign up (sign ups start next week Monday) and if you want, you can add optional details for the characters in the fandoms you requested. Wait till assignments are emailed out, write a completed fic over 1000 words, upload, and profit come Christmas day. There's more detail to it, but not by much. A lot of people just get super excited about Yuletide and have added more hurrah to it but you don't have to worry about that.

[icarus]

Okay, so it's a case of over-explaining something simple. Alas that I missed the fandom nominations. Truly, a Valdemar list is not complete without Vanyel, and a Riddlemaster of Hed story must be written.

Ah well.

[elf]

The basics, like she said, are simple. Pick 3-4 fandoms to offer, and 3-4 to request; get assignment; write fic. Wait for Dec 25; read your fic; comment politely. (Or, hopefully, comment squeefully, spewing joylicious glee all over the page.) Wait for Jan 1; reply to your recipient's comment.

There's some technical details about how to select & how to upload that get a lot of questions, which won't make any sense until you're in the middle of the process.

Key things: Requests are AND; offers are OR.
If you request Luke/Moira/Ryan, you are asking for a story with all three of those characters. There is no "exclude Angela" option; there is no way to say, "I want a story with at least any one of these characters, not a story focused on Angela or the Clone Squad," if Angela and the Clone Squad are also on the character list.

I tend to pick one or two characters that I want, and make it clear that I'm happy to have other characters involved.
---
Offers, however, run the opposite way.
If you offer Luke/Angela/Ryan, you may get assigned to write for someone who requested Luke alone, Luke/Ryan, Angela/Ryan, or Luke/Angela/Ryan. (Um. Slashes in YT character combos don't mean romantic/sexual; they just mean "all these are in the story.") You won't get assigned to someone who requested Luke/Moira, even if their notes said "Luke/Angela would also be okay." (However, you could write a Treat for that person.)

Signups can get hectic, because you can change them around until assignments are almost ready to go out--so people check out how many offers are signed up for some fandoms, and switch their offers around. You can do this; you don't need to.

Details are Optional.
The official requirement is "1000 words that features the character/s in the signup request." All story details are author's choice whether to deal with or ignore. (Most people want to please their recipient, so they try to match what was requested. However, there's a large group that pushes "write what you know and love" over "write what was asked for that you know you're going to botch.")

Extracurricular Fun
There's an IRC chat, #yuletide, that runs from now until January 1 or so. (It probably runs year-round, sort of, but it's *active* from now until YT reveals.)

The biggest thing for newbies to realize about the chatroom is the role of the "Hippos." Hippos are go-betweens to find beta readers and occasionally other assistance; when you've got a question, you PM a hippo, and they ask the chatroom for helpers without saying who you are, and the helper PMs the hippo, who contacts you, etc., and so on. It's a seemingly-complex way of maintaining anonymity, but they keep it fun and active.

There are other memes and tropes that occur in the chatroom; if you care, you can ask for details or just dive in. There's also a lot of general chatter about all sorts of fannish and ficcish things.

There's also a pinch-hitter list, for people to sign up for stories that have been defaulted on. There's no penalty for defaulting early (I think); the penalty for defaulting late is "you can't sign up for Yuletide until you've written a pinch hit."

Yuletide Treats are extra stories, either too small for the main archive (under 1k words), or posted after YT-main closes. There's a frantic rush to post treats in the few days between close-of-entries and a couple days after the 25th, when the treats open for viewing. There's no requirement at all to deal with treats, but lots of people get inspired by looking around at all the author letters, or they want to write a treat for their beta, or something like that.

There's probably more that I'm forgetting. But the main part--the official participate-in-Yuletide part--isn't very complicated. It's just that there's all these extra bits that have grown up around that.

[icarus]

There's something particularly delightful about just the name "Hippo." I have this happy image of a hippo sticking its head underwater, burbling at the writer, then surfacing, "Okay, what she wants to know is...."

I love IRC chats. Is the IRC channel already active? *glee*

I've heard about Yuletide for so many years. I can't wait to participate.

[elf]

Oh, the Hippos are even more fun than that! Hippos dance to get the attention of people in the chatroom, because just saying "looking for a beta for Chutes and Ladders" would get lost in the discussions.

So instead we get things like

HIPPO DANCES THE DANCE OF BETA-SEARCHING!

HIPPO TAPDANCES AND SWINGS SPARKLY VEILS TO BRING ALL EYES TO THE HIPPO!

HIPPO SHIMMIES AND SASHAYS ACROSS THE CHATROOM!

...until enough people have announced that they have heeded the hippo dance, and then the hippo posts something like "Seeking beta for Chutes and Ladders fic, 1400 words, M-rated, no canon knowledge necessary."

Yuletide is a blast.

The IRC chat is open. Not sure how active it is, but there are people hanging out already. Small group (as YT chats go), but it only gets bigger from here. It's at irc.sff.net (I think that matters? I never did sort out how IRC actually works, as opposed to being able to follow instructions to find my way into a few rooms.)

Other advices: Only offer things you know you can write for, preferably things you can write *anything* for. If possible, only request things you'd love to get anything in.

Offer things for which you'd love to get a request you'd never imagined trying to write. Request things for which you'd love to get a fic you'd never thought to ask for.

There've been past participants who admitted in their journals afterward, "well, I got [X] fandom, but I was really hoping to get [Y] from my request list and just kinda added [X] to fill out the list." And I wind up thinking, gah, there are nearly 3000 fandoms in Yuletide, and you couldn't find three that you'd be over-the-moon squealing to receive a story in? WTF?

[icarus]

Actually, I have to admit that I've gone through all the entire lists, and I can only find two that I would be over-the-moon about. Really. I mean, there is a third, but the characters offered are all female, so there goes the slash and ... no, no like. So my third fandom is that fourth one that I like, but I'm not jazzed about.

That's what happens when you miss the deadline to nominate fandoms.

Next year. Next year the Riddlemaster of Hed is getting his day.