Listen close to everybody's heart...

Yuletide works are scheduled to go live a little under five days from now, at 9pm UTC 24 December (if all goes well and there are no further pinch hits needed).

COUNTDOWN TO REVEALS

Treats

Treats in both the Madness and Main Yuletide collections are enthusiastically welcomed. You can post a treat for someone in the main collection up until 9pm UTC 24 December</>, and in the Madness collection up until 9pm UTC 25 December. There's more information about posting treats here. If you're hunting for inspiration, see also the mini-challenges tag at yuletide, and of course, please consider treats for pinch hitters.

Pinch hits

We’re still looking for intrepid writers to take on post-deadline pinch hits. As of this post, we need writers for:

PH #184: Aveyond (Video Games), Quasimorph (Video Game), Geneforge

PH #198: even if TEMPEST 宵闇にかく語りき魔女 (Visual Novel), Flowers Series (Visual Novels), Lkyt. (Visual Novel)

As well as offers from writers, we're keen to hear (yuletideadmin@gmail.com) from anyone with tips on how to consume or review details of these canons!

Please look at our outstanding pinch hit details, and help if you can!

Beta requests

Can you help out a fellow writer by beta-reading their work? Please check the hippo-want-ads at the Discord server, or email mods if you can help with one of the following requests and we’ll get you in touch.

As of this post, beta readers are needed for the following requests (click/expand to view):

1.2K T-rated Mayor of Kingstown
15k+ E-rated Damien/Gerald Coldfire Trilogy
7k Batman Wayne Family Adventures
Racepicker and sensitivity reader for a 10k fic featuring a young Black English girl
4.7k slang and other dialogue choices right for a Gen Z Black Londoner, Rivers of London
13k Lunar Chronicles
2.8k fic for The Odd Couple (TV 1970)
4k Nicked by M.T. Anderson

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We also have some less time-sensitive beta requests in the server's betas-wanted channel:
WH40k
The Witcher III/Chronicles of Narnia
The Stakeout from Inside No. 9
Daria (Cartoon)

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Meanwhile, please check your work

• Please check that you uploaded the right draft. Mistakes can happen to anyone, but checking that everything looks right is a crucial part of posting. Make sure your work has a title and that the summary doesn't say "tbd". Please check that all the text is there and you didn't post the version with [name?] and [thing goes here] notes. Any uploaded version must be a complete story that is readable as it is, even if you're still making edits between now and reveals. Please don't risk disappointing your recipient or requiring mods to seek a back-up pinch hit.


• Please check that all required characters feature in the work. This is likely to mean all the characters your recipient tagged, not just the ones they wrote prompts for. Or, if they selected Any, a character from the tag set. They may have selected additional tags that give further guidance about which characters to include - please check that too. If your recipient selected Worldbuilding and you're not sure there's enough of it, get a second opinion - a friend, a beta. If there is any doubt about whether your story contains all the characters it needs to contain, please check with mods. Prompts alone are not automatically permission to leave characters out. The use of additional tags may still leave some grey areas.


• Please review your author's notes. Yuletide stories are anonymous for one week - do not give your name or link to your personal sites or socials in your author's note. Do not promise expanded, future, or replacement gifts - your work needs to stand alone. And do not apologise for your work in your author's note, or talk about what a struggle it was to write. People often feel doubt as well as excitement when giving someone a story, but don't give your recipient your doubts as part of their gift. In your author's note, please follow the principle that if you cannot say something positive, don't say anything at all.


• Please check your recipient's Do-Not-Wants. Yes, again.


• Please check your story in general! You don't have to get it beta read, but please check spelling and grammar. Please make sure that it’s not a wall of text with no spacing between paragraphs - and, conversely, that there aren’t too many blank lines between paragraphs.

(And, having fully prepared for reveals - we hope that you are excited for them! We are!)

Miscellaneous

• If you're unlikely to be able to comment until the end of the anon period or later, consider letting your author know at the AFK post.
• You can find beta volunteers at this post or at the Discord server.

LINKS
Schedule, Rules, & Collection | Contact Mods | Tag Set | Tag Set App | Community DW | Community LJ | Discord | Pinch hits on Dreamwidth | Beta post

The deadline has passed, and the main collection is temporarily closed. ETA - now open again!

Congratulations to everyone who has posted! Pat yourself on the back, take a breath, and then please check wordcount, formatting, html; check that you've uploaded the correct version, and that all your text is actually there. You can get to what you've submitted from your Statistics page, or from your Works in Collections. Your story should be marked as "complete" rather than one or more of multiple chapters yet to come.

To all who didn't make it this year: it happens, and we hope you enjoy the collection reveals.

To all who are still working on beta jobs, treats, or pinch hits: thank you and good luck!


Pinch hits coming!!
Post-deadline pinch hits will be available soon at yuletide_pinch_hits. This next round will be due at 9 AM UTC, 22 December.

See what time that is in YOUR timezone
See countdown

Beta requests
We have outstanding beta requests on the Yuletide Discord (please see the #hippo-want-ads channel), and more betas are always welcome at the Dreamwidth beta post.


There is also an Away from Keyboard post up on the participant community, for you to (optionally) let your author know if it'll be a while before you can read your gift.


If there seems to be an issue with your posted work, we'll contact you via the email address associated with your AO3 account. Please check you can access that!

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Schedule, Rules, & Collection | Contact Mods | Participant DW | Participant LJ | Pinch Hits on DW | Discord | Tag set | Tag set app
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