Yuletide Madness 2017, and How & Where to Post Works
The Yuletide Madness 2017 collection is open and so are the requests of Yuletide 2017!
The requests are also available:
Please peruse, write, and enjoy.
You are welcome to submit works to either Madness or the main Yuletide collection.
We are a few weeks into assignments and some of you might be ready to post a story. For a refresher on how and where to do that, please read on. The following information is also covered in the Posting section of the Yuletide FAQ.
Posting Your Assignment
First, log in to the Archive of Our Own.
You can find your assignment on your personal Assignments page, at http://archiveofourown.org/users/YOUR-NAME/assignments.
You can also get to your assignment through the Yuletide 2017 collection. Once you are at the collection, look at the left-hand list and click on “My Assignment”.
Click the “Fulfill” button at the right of your assignment, and you will be taken to a Post New Work page with your recipient’s name and the collection name filled in. You will also see a field that says “Does this fulfill a challenge assignment?” (in the “Associations” section of the form) and the name of the challenge and your recipient will appear there, with a tick in the box.
You can fill in the rest of the details and post from here.
Your assignment must be complete and posted before 9am UTC on December 18 (this is long before midnight).
Posting a Treat
Anyone can write and post a story for someone’s Yuletide prompts.
Once logged in to AO3, go to the main Yuletide 2017 collection or to the Yuletide Madness 2017 collection and click the Post to Collection button on the right side.
This will take you to the Archive’s Post New Work page, with the name of the collection already filled in for you. You will need to add your recipient’s name, as well as all the other details of the work. It’s a good idea to check the spelling of your recipient’s name - all signed-up participants are listed on the Yuletide 2017 profile page.
It is important that any work you post has the collection’s name filled in first. Otherwise, you may accidentally post a work that is not anonymous and your recipient will get a notification about their gift before the correct time.
Madness vs. Main Collection
Treats can be posted in either the main Yuletide 2017 collection or to the Yuletide Madness 2017 collection. Please don’t move your work from one collection to another.
If deciding which collection to put your treat in, here are some guidelines:
Main collection
Madness collection
If your story is not complete by December 26, you will not be able to post it in a Yuletide collection in 2017. We suggest you hold it until the New Year’s Resolution 2018 collection opens on January 1.
There is more information on Treats in the Yuletide FAQ on AO3.
Drafts
Drafts do not show up on our end as completed assignments, and they are only kept by AO3 for a month. You will know if your work is a draft if there is a warning at the top of the work that says "This work is a draft and has not been posted. The draft will be automatically deleted on [date]". A Draft work also appears under Drafts in the menu on the left on your own AO3 page (when logged in). We can tell you if you have uploaded a draft, if you are unsure. Please finalize the posting of your work as soon as possible, or risk being defaulted at deadline.
Placeholders
Do not upload a placeholder work to the collection. It’s okay if the story that you upload is a bit rough, and you plan to edit it, but it should be a complete story. Otherwise, if your internet access is somehow compromised or something happens to you, your recipient may be very disappointed on December 25, and we will have to scramble to find a last-minute pinch hit.
At the December 18 deadline, we will do a check for placeholders. If we find any at that time, their author’s further participation will be restricted. A New Year’s Resolution fic will be required if the offending author wishes to sign up again; and we may impose further penalties.
Deadlines
This year’s default deadline is 09:00 UTC on December 11. What time is that where I am? If you default after this time, you will generally need to write a 1,000-word story for New Year’s Resolution 2018 in order to sign up to Yuletide in 2018.
This year’s posting deadline is 09:00 UTC on December 18. What time is that where I am? Please get your story in by then!
Those times are in UTC, not EST or similar (it may be at a very odd hour for you! Please check) It is not the end of the 18th in any time zone.
Other Questions and Issues
Can I edit my work after I’ve posted it? Yes! Absolutely.
I posted my work to the collection, but now I can’t find it. Have a look in http://archiveofourown.org/users/YOUR-NAME/works/collected - you’ll need to be signed in. You can also get there by going to your Works and clicking on Works in Collections at the right. Or, check your Statistics page.
Can I upload a story without a fandom or without a recipient, to hide who’s getting what? No. Please label your work accurately when you upload it. If you’re not sure how to tag your work, email yuletideadmin@gmail.com for advice.
Is it true my Treat might become someone’s main assignment? Yes, in the following circumstances.
I wrote a treat for someone. I think they’ll like it, but it doesn’t use all of their characters/ is kind of experimental/ I wouldn’t feel comfortable if it were the only gift they got. Please put it in the Yuletide Madness 2017 collection.
The fandom I wrote for isn’t showing up in the collection’s fandoms list. This fandom may need to be made canonical by the AO3 tag wranglers. Or it may be there by another name - Yuletide fandoms don't always map exactly to canonical AO3 fandoms. If you go to your story and click on the fandom tag you've entered, you can see if it has a different canonical form (for example if it is synned to a wider tag or has a different format). If it’s getting close to story reveals, drop us a line and we’ll see if we can help.
I still have a question…
The requests are also available:
- as a text file, ordered by participant, thanks to Flamebyrd (via Google drive | via Dropbox) - if given an option for encoding, please choose UTF-8.
- as a searchable database, thank you to karanguni and the letters spreadsheet volunteers - see additional instructions here
Please peruse, write, and enjoy.
You are welcome to submit works to either Madness or the main Yuletide collection.
We are a few weeks into assignments and some of you might be ready to post a story. For a refresher on how and where to do that, please read on. The following information is also covered in the Posting section of the Yuletide FAQ.
Posting Your Assignment
First, log in to the Archive of Our Own.
You can find your assignment on your personal Assignments page, at http://archiveofourown.org/users/YOUR-NAME/assignments.
You can also get to your assignment through the Yuletide 2017 collection. Once you are at the collection, look at the left-hand list and click on “My Assignment”.
Click the “Fulfill” button at the right of your assignment, and you will be taken to a Post New Work page with your recipient’s name and the collection name filled in. You will also see a field that says “Does this fulfill a challenge assignment?” (in the “Associations” section of the form) and the name of the challenge and your recipient will appear there, with a tick in the box.
You can fill in the rest of the details and post from here.
Your assignment must be complete and posted before 9am UTC on December 18 (this is long before midnight).
Posting a Treat
Anyone can write and post a story for someone’s Yuletide prompts.
Once logged in to AO3, go to the main Yuletide 2017 collection or to the Yuletide Madness 2017 collection and click the Post to Collection button on the right side.
This will take you to the Archive’s Post New Work page, with the name of the collection already filled in for you. You will need to add your recipient’s name, as well as all the other details of the work. It’s a good idea to check the spelling of your recipient’s name - all signed-up participants are listed on the Yuletide 2017 profile page.
It is important that any work you post has the collection’s name filled in first. Otherwise, you may accidentally post a work that is not anonymous and your recipient will get a notification about their gift before the correct time.
Madness vs. Main Collection
Treats can be posted in either the main Yuletide 2017 collection or to the Yuletide Madness 2017 collection. Please don’t move your work from one collection to another.
If deciding which collection to put your treat in, here are some guidelines:
Main collection
- The Main collection is open for posting between now and (early) December 25.
- A story in the main collection must have over 1,000 words of text.
- A story in the main collection must have 1 Yuletide participant as the recipient.
- A story in the main collection must match a fandom and character set requested by the recipient in 2017.
- It is possible for a treat in the Main collection to become the recipient’s only gift for that year. This happens rarely (see fuller explanation below).
Madness collection
- The Madness collection is open for posting between now and (early) December 26.
- Works in Madness can be any length, and do not have to be text-based (though we suggest you check through the mods before giving someone art or other media).
- Works in Madness will not be taken as a substitute for main gifts. They may be a person’s only gift if that person defaulted.
- Works in Madness do not have to precisely fit the fandoms and characters requested by a person in 2017. However, each work must be a gift for a specific person (or people) and you must have reason to believe it would be an appropriate gift for that person.
If your story is not complete by December 26, you will not be able to post it in a Yuletide collection in 2017. We suggest you hold it until the New Year’s Resolution 2018 collection opens on January 1.
There is more information on Treats in the Yuletide FAQ on AO3.
Drafts
Drafts do not show up on our end as completed assignments, and they are only kept by AO3 for a month. You will know if your work is a draft if there is a warning at the top of the work that says "This work is a draft and has not been posted. The draft will be automatically deleted on [date]". A Draft work also appears under Drafts in the menu on the left on your own AO3 page (when logged in). We can tell you if you have uploaded a draft, if you are unsure. Please finalize the posting of your work as soon as possible, or risk being defaulted at deadline.
Placeholders
Do not upload a placeholder work to the collection. It’s okay if the story that you upload is a bit rough, and you plan to edit it, but it should be a complete story. Otherwise, if your internet access is somehow compromised or something happens to you, your recipient may be very disappointed on December 25, and we will have to scramble to find a last-minute pinch hit.
At the December 18 deadline, we will do a check for placeholders. If we find any at that time, their author’s further participation will be restricted. A New Year’s Resolution fic will be required if the offending author wishes to sign up again; and we may impose further penalties.
Deadlines
This year’s default deadline is 09:00 UTC on December 11. What time is that where I am? If you default after this time, you will generally need to write a 1,000-word story for New Year’s Resolution 2018 in order to sign up to Yuletide in 2018.
This year’s posting deadline is 09:00 UTC on December 18. What time is that where I am? Please get your story in by then!
Those times are in UTC, not EST or similar (it may be at a very odd hour for you! Please check) It is not the end of the 18th in any time zone.
Other Questions and Issues
Can I edit my work after I’ve posted it? Yes! Absolutely.
I posted my work to the collection, but now I can’t find it. Have a look in http://archiveofourown.org/users/YOUR-NAME/works/collected - you’ll need to be signed in. You can also get there by going to your Works and clicking on Works in Collections at the right. Or, check your Statistics page.
Can I upload a story without a fandom or without a recipient, to hide who’s getting what? No. Please label your work accurately when you upload it. If you’re not sure how to tag your work, email yuletideadmin@gmail.com for advice.
Is it true my Treat might become someone’s main assignment? Yes, in the following circumstances.
- If the person who was officially assigned to your recipient defaults at the December 18 deadline, we may check to see if they have a treat in the archive instead of sending them out to the pinch hit list. That is because of the very high volume of pinch hits late in the Yuletide season.
- If we send someone out to pinch hit after the default deadline (December 11) and several days go by without a pinch hitter volunteering to write for them, we may check to see if they have a treat in the archive. (This has not happened before, as far as we know.)
- If Person A defaults, and then their assigned writer defaults, we don’t send Person A out to the pinch hit list - their default means they are no longer guaranteed a gift. That means that a treat you write for Person A may be their only gift.
I wrote a treat for someone. I think they’ll like it, but it doesn’t use all of their characters/ is kind of experimental/ I wouldn’t feel comfortable if it were the only gift they got. Please put it in the Yuletide Madness 2017 collection.
The fandom I wrote for isn’t showing up in the collection’s fandoms list. This fandom may need to be made canonical by the AO3 tag wranglers. Or it may be there by another name - Yuletide fandoms don't always map exactly to canonical AO3 fandoms. If you go to your story and click on the fandom tag you've entered, you can see if it has a different canonical form (for example if it is synned to a wider tag or has a different format). If it’s getting close to story reveals, drop us a line and we’ll see if we can help.
I still have a question…
- If it’s a general question, ask in the DW or LJ comments; the Yuletide Discord channel; or in the #yuletide IRC channel.
- If it might give away your assignment, send us an email (yuletideadmin@gmail.com) and we’ll do our best to sort you out.
- If it’s about how to post complicated works (e.g., unusual formatting), then it is probably best for you to ask AO3 Support.