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SIGN UP HERE: https://forms.gle/o2uSzbXEPRfuJtLSA
What is Yuletide?
Yuletide as a concept is a fanfic exchange event that started on LiveJournal in 2003. The original Yuletide was for obscure fandoms, but its popularity eventually led to people creating fandom-specific events, regardless of whether or not they're obscure.
Hello, peeps! Welcome, one and all, to the fifth Canalave Library Yuletide! To all of you first-timers who don’t know what a Yuletide is… fear not! I’ll explain. It’s simple, really: we exchange gifts… writing and art gifts. You sign up for it, you create a gift, and you get one as well. So, it’s Secret Santa for us fanfic buffs. Signing up is half the fun though… you also have the added excitement of trying to guess what you’ll get!
So, the ground rules.
How does it work?
First up is the sign-up phase (from August 15th to September 8th). To sign up, submit a form via Google Forms below. The staff will collect those, and proceed to the matchmaking phase based on your Recipient answers. By doing so, we’ll match sender-recipient pairs. Then, we’ll send out assignments via DM and leave you to your work while we sip pina coladas in the sun.
During the creation phase (starting after the sign-up phase, ending on December 23rd), the senders are to submit their works substantially (see rules for further details). We will also check on you guys every two weeks to make sure everything’s moving, and I know it can be annoying to rush greatness, but please respond to those DMs to help the process move along smoothly. After that, all you have to do is send your masterpiece to us via DM! The process is detailed below.
Of course, we still have Yuletide Madness. And what is that? Well, on December 16th, we take the entire week to look at any unfulfilled requests. To ensure no one goes dry on Christmas, we post those orphaned requests publicly, and you can contact the staff to either 1) inform us of that request’s status and have us take it down, or 2) claim that prompt to yourself.
Once we get to December 23rd, and the creation phase officially ends, all prompts are closed. We then move on to the reveal phase, on December 25th, which is a completely random day. During the reveal phase, all submitted works will be uploaded to a Google Drive folder. The works will all be renamed to their recipients’ names. Once everyone gains access to the folder (should be around morning), everyone can access their gifts and comment on them via Google, on the server, or on the forum thread.
And senders, do not fret: you, too, will get the Christmas gift… of visibility. You can, and should, post your work and brag about it on the appropriate channels after the reveal phase is done (Writing goes on writing channels, art goes on art channels, etc).
How do we sign up?
As mentioned earlier, if you'd like to participate, you’ll need to fill out this form: https://forms.gle/jq8ELhRvFa6HA2ut5
You’ll have the ability to edit your entries as much as you’d like, but as soon as sign-ups close, that’s it. So remember: September 15 is the last day you can edit your profiles!
If you can, you should fill out the form completely; that being said, most fields are optional. We’re giving you freedom to be as vague or as specific as you want with your profile. Do be warned, however, that any fields left blank will be treated as wild cards, which means they’ll be filled out randomly.
If your recipient drops out of Yuletide, you’ll first be given a choice about whether you’d like to finish your current prompt or not. Then, you’ll be offered a new prompt. If none of those choices suits your fancy, we’ll have you be a honorary pinch-hitter until the creation phase closing - or until an orphaned prompt catches your eye.
NOTE: a “pinch-hitter” is someone who, as the name states, will “hit” (write) for someone else who can’t make it (a “pinch”).
Last but not least: you don’t need to be a forum member to participate, but you do need to be at least on our Discord server. Leaving the server during the event equals forfeiting, leaving you without a gift as well.
How are assignments generated specifically?
We, the staff, will gather all the forms sent to us and compile them in a list. We’ll then do our best to match you with a recipient that fits your answers. We will, of course, randomize a few steps to make things interesting, especially if multiple assignments find themselves without a date to the prom.
Recipients can ask for fanworks of their own content; if that’s the case, we’ll avoid pairing said recipient with someone who hasn’t seen said content. You won’t have to worry about cramming reading a whole work into your creative process!
How does the creation phase work?
You, the sender, will receive a DM with a prompt and instructions concerning it. We will, then, get off your case - aside from the biweekly check-up, of course - until the writing phase ends.
After you’re done with your prompt, you’ll DM your work to whoever sent you the instructions before. You can either send it as a Discord DM attachment, or upload it to a file hosting service and send it via DM as a link. If you pick Google Drive, remember to give a shareable link and to enable comments on your work.
Important note! When sending your work to your liaison, please include the following form to make putting the Yuletide tree together easier:
**Username:** (your name on either Discord or the forums)
**Title of Work:**
**Rating:**
**Warnings:** (if any)
**Summary:** (a short summary of your piece—will be displayed during the sender reveals)
**For:** (your recipient)
After that, you can go have a nap and be happy. Or, if you’re a pinch-hitter, stay on guard; we just might need you to hit for us!
What happens when people can't finish? (And how do pinch-hitting works?)
If, until December 15th, a sender tells the staff they cannot make the deadline, we’ll pass it onto one of the pinch-hitters and all is well. If the sender drops out between December 16th and the reveal day, their prompt will also be sent to the pinch-hitters, but this person will be banned from the next Yuletide. Repeat offenders will get a permaban for all Yuletides.
Crisis mode: if a sender goes AWOL and their prompt isn’t finished in time by any pinch-hitters, the orphaned prompt(s) will be collected and offered up to participants in a separate drive. Obviously, said prompts won’t make the reveal phase, but hopefully by January 1 everyone who’s on the belated list will get something.
The process of assigning a pinch-hitter is a bit looser than the actual sign-up phase. Whereas the normal assignment phase involves the librarians pairing off senders with the best-fitting assignment according to their preferences, pinch-hit assignments are sent out to everyone who specifies that they'd be interested in pinch-hitting. Anyone interested in taking up the orphaned assignment should respond via DM to claim it and pull it out of rotation.
What's a check-in?
Once every two weeks, we’ll send every sender a DM to see if everyone’s alive and well. You don’t need to feel alarmed or under pressure; just send us a quick response back so that we know everything is moving along. It doesn’t even have to be more than 10 words long. Failure to respond to two or more check-ins will mean, to us, that you’ve gone AWOL and your prompt might be taken from you and given to a pinch-hitter. Please respond, even if it’s just “howdy”!!
Hard Rules
1. You must create something to receive something. Do not sign up for the event just to receive. (You can, however, sign up for the event just to create. Alls you got to do is let us know that's what you want to do, and we'll mark you down as awesome.)
2. Again, to submit your work, to ask questions about your specific prompt set, to claim pinch-hit prompts, anything like that must be done via PM or DM. Basically, if it would reveal yourself as an author of a particular story, contact us privately, not publicly. (You are still free to discuss Yuletide in the public channels. Just … don’t reveal enough info to make it obvious who you’re creating for.)
3. Your gift must be of a substantial size to count. “Substantial size” is defined as such:
-- Writing: 1000 words or more.
-- Art: A finished piece. For full-on art, the piece in question must not be a sketch. It must be fully finished, either through an image editing program or traditional media. Graphics are fine so long as you’ve contributed enough artistic flair to it to make them your own. That is to say, cropped images, single sprites with bare-bones backgrounds, and so forth will not count.
-- Other: A finished song, a finished game, or a workable program.
4. While you can be as creative as you'd like with your prompts, please keep in mind that the following are not acceptable:
-- NSFW (Not Safe For Work—i.e., porn) prompts/prompts that specifically request NSFW material or can only result in NSFW creations. This includes image prompts that link to porn.
-- Prompts requesting non-Pokémon work. As much as we’d love to populate the Non-Pokémon forum, for the sake of the other senders (who might not know your fandoms), this is a Pokémon-only Yuletide.
-- You absolutely can request fic, art, or other works based on your own work, but there is an important catch: your work must be on the forum to do so, to avoid forcing someone else to hunt for your work. (Special note to fanwork creators: You will not be given a prompt for someone else’s work if you haven’t read and reviewed it, so don’t worry about scrambling to catch up!)
-- Any other prompt that would be a violation to forum or board-wide rules.
5. You're free to interpret prompts as you wish, but your work absolutely needs to match the prompt you've received in some way. If, for example, someone asks for an Ash/Misty fic in which Ash learns the true meaning of Boxing Day while Misty attempts to write her own Christmas carol about the Patrick Swayze classic Roadhouse, your story must have elements of all of that. Looser prompts, of course, will probably be a little more merciful.
-- On that note, to recipients: Please note that prompt lists are normally a list of separate possible concepts for the sender to work with. However, if you want your sender to put together a work that hits all of the prompts in your list, please make that as clear as possible.
-- Also a note to recipients: As noted in the form, you can request fanwork of your fanwork (fanfanfiction or fanfanart, if you will), you must also include a minimum of one prompt that doesn’t require knowledge of your work (read: is unrelated to your work) to fill.
6. Do not create something to deliberately piss off your recipient. This will be considered trolling, and you will be banned from future Yuletides.
-- …unless your recipient specifies that they want to be pissed off. Then … you do you, folks.
7. You can fill as many prompts as you'd like, so yes, you can create multiple works for one recipient. As long as your works collectively fulfill one or more of the above requirements for a Yuletide gift, you're good.
8. No, you cannot collaborate with another sender in order to create a gift. You can, however, get a beta reader or tester, and in fact, you're heavily encouraged to do so.
9. If you’re a writer, you may reach out to other artists, on or off the community (preferably on) to add illustrations to your work. However:
-- A. These illustrations must not be vital to the understanding of your story. This would make your work a collaboration and thus a violation to rule #8.
-- B. These absolutely must not be commissions.
10. You are free to submit your work early if you get it done early. Remember, all entries should go to your liaison so we can keep track of them. However, your deadline to get your work in is December 23.
11. Please note that when submitting your work, it's super important to include the form mentioned above! The head liaison is extremely bad at summaries, and you do not want her describing your piece for you. Trust us..
Who's running the event?/Who do I talk to if I have issues with the event?
This year’s Yuletide is being run by the following peeps:
Zorquil the Fluffy
Bayalexion
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to hit any of them up via DM.
Can I swap my prompt?/I really don’t feel comfortable with my prompt. Can I exchange it for something else?
If (and only if) you’re unable to fulfill your prompt because it’s triggering or otherwise extremely uncomfortable to tackle, your prompt will be sent off to the pinch-hitters, and you will be automatically given the next prompt dropped. You may not exchange a prompt with anyone else to avoid confusion.
In addition to fanwork, can I request original work? What about work from another fandom?
You're welcome and encouraged to ask for original work! Be sure to note this down in your profiles, under either characters/pairings or prompts. (Senders, please don't create original work unless your recipient asks for it!)
However, we sadly cannot accept requests for fanwork of other fandoms, even as crossovers with Pokémon, as we cannot guarantee your sender will know those fandoms. Sorry!
And that's that. Hope everyone enjoys this year's event! Have fun!!
What is Yuletide?
Yuletide as a concept is a fanfic exchange event that started on LiveJournal in 2003. The original Yuletide was for obscure fandoms, but its popularity eventually led to people creating fandom-specific events, regardless of whether or not they're obscure.
Hello, peeps! Welcome, one and all, to the fifth Canalave Library Yuletide! To all of you first-timers who don’t know what a Yuletide is… fear not! I’ll explain. It’s simple, really: we exchange gifts… writing and art gifts. You sign up for it, you create a gift, and you get one as well. So, it’s Secret Santa for us fanfic buffs. Signing up is half the fun though… you also have the added excitement of trying to guess what you’ll get!
So, the ground rules.
How does it work?
First up is the sign-up phase (from August 15th to September 8th). To sign up, submit a form via Google Forms below. The staff will collect those, and proceed to the matchmaking phase based on your Recipient answers. By doing so, we’ll match sender-recipient pairs. Then, we’ll send out assignments via DM and leave you to your work while we sip pina coladas in the sun.
During the creation phase (starting after the sign-up phase, ending on December 23rd), the senders are to submit their works substantially (see rules for further details). We will also check on you guys every two weeks to make sure everything’s moving, and I know it can be annoying to rush greatness, but please respond to those DMs to help the process move along smoothly. After that, all you have to do is send your masterpiece to us via DM! The process is detailed below.
Of course, we still have Yuletide Madness. And what is that? Well, on December 16th, we take the entire week to look at any unfulfilled requests. To ensure no one goes dry on Christmas, we post those orphaned requests publicly, and you can contact the staff to either 1) inform us of that request’s status and have us take it down, or 2) claim that prompt to yourself.
Once we get to December 23rd, and the creation phase officially ends, all prompts are closed. We then move on to the reveal phase, on December 25th, which is a completely random day. During the reveal phase, all submitted works will be uploaded to a Google Drive folder. The works will all be renamed to their recipients’ names. Once everyone gains access to the folder (should be around morning), everyone can access their gifts and comment on them via Google, on the server, or on the forum thread.
And senders, do not fret: you, too, will get the Christmas gift… of visibility. You can, and should, post your work and brag about it on the appropriate channels after the reveal phase is done (Writing goes on writing channels, art goes on art channels, etc).
How do we sign up?
As mentioned earlier, if you'd like to participate, you’ll need to fill out this form: https://forms.gle/jq8ELhRvFa6HA2ut5
You’ll have the ability to edit your entries as much as you’d like, but as soon as sign-ups close, that’s it. So remember: September 15 is the last day you can edit your profiles!
If you can, you should fill out the form completely; that being said, most fields are optional. We’re giving you freedom to be as vague or as specific as you want with your profile. Do be warned, however, that any fields left blank will be treated as wild cards, which means they’ll be filled out randomly.
If your recipient drops out of Yuletide, you’ll first be given a choice about whether you’d like to finish your current prompt or not. Then, you’ll be offered a new prompt. If none of those choices suits your fancy, we’ll have you be a honorary pinch-hitter until the creation phase closing - or until an orphaned prompt catches your eye.
NOTE: a “pinch-hitter” is someone who, as the name states, will “hit” (write) for someone else who can’t make it (a “pinch”).
Last but not least: you don’t need to be a forum member to participate, but you do need to be at least on our Discord server. Leaving the server during the event equals forfeiting, leaving you without a gift as well.
How are assignments generated specifically?
We, the staff, will gather all the forms sent to us and compile them in a list. We’ll then do our best to match you with a recipient that fits your answers. We will, of course, randomize a few steps to make things interesting, especially if multiple assignments find themselves without a date to the prom.
Recipients can ask for fanworks of their own content; if that’s the case, we’ll avoid pairing said recipient with someone who hasn’t seen said content. You won’t have to worry about cramming reading a whole work into your creative process!
How does the creation phase work?
You, the sender, will receive a DM with a prompt and instructions concerning it. We will, then, get off your case - aside from the biweekly check-up, of course - until the writing phase ends.
After you’re done with your prompt, you’ll DM your work to whoever sent you the instructions before. You can either send it as a Discord DM attachment, or upload it to a file hosting service and send it via DM as a link. If you pick Google Drive, remember to give a shareable link and to enable comments on your work.
Important note! When sending your work to your liaison, please include the following form to make putting the Yuletide tree together easier:
**Username:** (your name on either Discord or the forums)
**Title of Work:**
**Rating:**
**Warnings:** (if any)
**Summary:** (a short summary of your piece—will be displayed during the sender reveals)
**For:** (your recipient)
After that, you can go have a nap and be happy. Or, if you’re a pinch-hitter, stay on guard; we just might need you to hit for us!
What happens when people can't finish? (And how do pinch-hitting works?)
If, until December 15th, a sender tells the staff they cannot make the deadline, we’ll pass it onto one of the pinch-hitters and all is well. If the sender drops out between December 16th and the reveal day, their prompt will also be sent to the pinch-hitters, but this person will be banned from the next Yuletide. Repeat offenders will get a permaban for all Yuletides.
Crisis mode: if a sender goes AWOL and their prompt isn’t finished in time by any pinch-hitters, the orphaned prompt(s) will be collected and offered up to participants in a separate drive. Obviously, said prompts won’t make the reveal phase, but hopefully by January 1 everyone who’s on the belated list will get something.
The process of assigning a pinch-hitter is a bit looser than the actual sign-up phase. Whereas the normal assignment phase involves the librarians pairing off senders with the best-fitting assignment according to their preferences, pinch-hit assignments are sent out to everyone who specifies that they'd be interested in pinch-hitting. Anyone interested in taking up the orphaned assignment should respond via DM to claim it and pull it out of rotation.
What's a check-in?
Once every two weeks, we’ll send every sender a DM to see if everyone’s alive and well. You don’t need to feel alarmed or under pressure; just send us a quick response back so that we know everything is moving along. It doesn’t even have to be more than 10 words long. Failure to respond to two or more check-ins will mean, to us, that you’ve gone AWOL and your prompt might be taken from you and given to a pinch-hitter. Please respond, even if it’s just “howdy”!!
Hard Rules
1. You must create something to receive something. Do not sign up for the event just to receive. (You can, however, sign up for the event just to create. Alls you got to do is let us know that's what you want to do, and we'll mark you down as awesome.)
2. Again, to submit your work, to ask questions about your specific prompt set, to claim pinch-hit prompts, anything like that must be done via PM or DM. Basically, if it would reveal yourself as an author of a particular story, contact us privately, not publicly. (You are still free to discuss Yuletide in the public channels. Just … don’t reveal enough info to make it obvious who you’re creating for.)
3. Your gift must be of a substantial size to count. “Substantial size” is defined as such:
-- Writing: 1000 words or more.
-- Art: A finished piece. For full-on art, the piece in question must not be a sketch. It must be fully finished, either through an image editing program or traditional media. Graphics are fine so long as you’ve contributed enough artistic flair to it to make them your own. That is to say, cropped images, single sprites with bare-bones backgrounds, and so forth will not count.
-- Other: A finished song, a finished game, or a workable program.
4. While you can be as creative as you'd like with your prompts, please keep in mind that the following are not acceptable:
-- NSFW (Not Safe For Work—i.e., porn) prompts/prompts that specifically request NSFW material or can only result in NSFW creations. This includes image prompts that link to porn.
-- Prompts requesting non-Pokémon work. As much as we’d love to populate the Non-Pokémon forum, for the sake of the other senders (who might not know your fandoms), this is a Pokémon-only Yuletide.
-- You absolutely can request fic, art, or other works based on your own work, but there is an important catch: your work must be on the forum to do so, to avoid forcing someone else to hunt for your work. (Special note to fanwork creators: You will not be given a prompt for someone else’s work if you haven’t read and reviewed it, so don’t worry about scrambling to catch up!)
-- Any other prompt that would be a violation to forum or board-wide rules.
5. You're free to interpret prompts as you wish, but your work absolutely needs to match the prompt you've received in some way. If, for example, someone asks for an Ash/Misty fic in which Ash learns the true meaning of Boxing Day while Misty attempts to write her own Christmas carol about the Patrick Swayze classic Roadhouse, your story must have elements of all of that. Looser prompts, of course, will probably be a little more merciful.
-- On that note, to recipients: Please note that prompt lists are normally a list of separate possible concepts for the sender to work with. However, if you want your sender to put together a work that hits all of the prompts in your list, please make that as clear as possible.
-- Also a note to recipients: As noted in the form, you can request fanwork of your fanwork (fanfanfiction or fanfanart, if you will), you must also include a minimum of one prompt that doesn’t require knowledge of your work (read: is unrelated to your work) to fill.
6. Do not create something to deliberately piss off your recipient. This will be considered trolling, and you will be banned from future Yuletides.
-- …unless your recipient specifies that they want to be pissed off. Then … you do you, folks.
7. You can fill as many prompts as you'd like, so yes, you can create multiple works for one recipient. As long as your works collectively fulfill one or more of the above requirements for a Yuletide gift, you're good.
8. No, you cannot collaborate with another sender in order to create a gift. You can, however, get a beta reader or tester, and in fact, you're heavily encouraged to do so.
9. If you’re a writer, you may reach out to other artists, on or off the community (preferably on) to add illustrations to your work. However:
-- A. These illustrations must not be vital to the understanding of your story. This would make your work a collaboration and thus a violation to rule #8.
-- B. These absolutely must not be commissions.
10. You are free to submit your work early if you get it done early. Remember, all entries should go to your liaison so we can keep track of them. However, your deadline to get your work in is December 23.
11. Please note that when submitting your work, it's super important to include the form mentioned above! The head liaison is extremely bad at summaries, and you do not want her describing your piece for you. Trust us..
Who's running the event?/Who do I talk to if I have issues with the event?
This year’s Yuletide is being run by the following peeps:
Zorquil the Fluffy
Bayalexion
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to hit any of them up via DM.
Can I swap my prompt?/I really don’t feel comfortable with my prompt. Can I exchange it for something else?
If (and only if) you’re unable to fulfill your prompt because it’s triggering or otherwise extremely uncomfortable to tackle, your prompt will be sent off to the pinch-hitters, and you will be automatically given the next prompt dropped. You may not exchange a prompt with anyone else to avoid confusion.
In addition to fanwork, can I request original work? What about work from another fandom?
You're welcome and encouraged to ask for original work! Be sure to note this down in your profiles, under either characters/pairings or prompts. (Senders, please don't create original work unless your recipient asks for it!)
However, we sadly cannot accept requests for fanwork of other fandoms, even as crossovers with Pokémon, as we cannot guarantee your sender will know those fandoms. Sorry!
And that's that. Hope everyone enjoys this year's event! Have fun!!
