The question of Yuletide

[jenett]

So, I mentioned in a comment that it looks like this year's Yuletide rules mean that it's possibly worth making a case for Alternity (specifically, they've changed some of the rules around fanworks) and there'd already been some interest in the idea.

So here, have a post with a few more thoughts about that, for anyone interested in further discussion



What's Yuletide?:
For people who aren't familiar with it, Yuletide is a very large fic exchange for small fandoms that has run every year for more than a decade. (Very large = last year's had about 2600 fics in the main collection)

The exchange is anonymous to begin: You know the person you are writing for (and see their requests), but your story is initially posted without your name attached (from when the archive opens, which is December 24thish, until New Year's Day.)

They define small fandoms based on the number of stories on FF.Net and Archive of our own (fewer than 1000 stories of at least 1000 words between the two, though definitions have varied a little year to year) with some additional eligibility considerations for things like fanworks, reboots, shifts of medium, and so on.

People sign up with requests (fandoms + characters they would like to receive) and offers (fandoms + characters they are willing to write). These get put into the matching engine, which eventually spits out a match for each person (sometimes with a little manual tweaking.)

You are not required to write on the thing you matched on (I've twice had times where I matched on something with someone, and then one of their other requests looked much more interesting to me, so I did that instead), and a number of people also scan the lists of Dear Yuletide Writer letters and look for fandoms, prompts, and other details that interest them and may write treats (things they want to write, but weren't assigned.)

To actually fulfill the exchange, you have to write at least 1,000 words about the fandom and characters in the request you are assigned. Many people write leters that give various prompts, make it clear if they'd welcome other character combinations/etc.

(It's considered very bad form to use this to get around characters who could not be nominated because they're too popular, but it's fine and common to say things like "My request is about wanting to see something more about the staff dynamics at Hogwarts, and I'd really love to see Albus-as-Brutka dealing with a staff meeting in Y5, but I'd also be just fine with Pansy and Lav trying to work out a business loan difficulty, or more about the Aldrich Radio station, or worldbuilding fic about things with briefly named characters we don't see, maybe especially Sherwood."

Basically, at least one of the suggestions and preferably more needs to match your actual request you might get matched on, but other variants can be okay, as long as it's options. But giving someone those things if they don't explicitly say it's okay, not going to fulfill your exchange requirement, and again, it's bad form to ask for things that would not have been eligible for Yuletide for whatever reason, and using optional details to request a major focus characters who were not nominated at all is also generally discouraged).

The exchange's FAQ goes into a lot more detail.

My tag for Yuletide on my journal includes both my letters for the past few years, and some recs, if you want to get an idea of the range of stuff out there. (I remain unhappy with the structure of some of my letters, but they give some idea of range of prompts.)

Nominations
So, the thing specific here to Alternity is that each person (who is generally intending to participate: you are not required to nominate to do so, but nominating when you're sure you won't write for the exchange, again, not the done thing) can nominate up to 3 fandoms with 4 characters each, but that for anything where there might be questions, you need to provide evidence.

The other part is that because each person can only nominate 4 characters, there's often some coordination of character nominations between people interested in that fandom. (Characters who are not nominated can, of course, be mentioned, but shouldn't be central, and you always have the chance of someone having a very firm request for particular characters without mentioning other options.)

So, what I suggest here is:

1) Collaboration on an evidence post (I am glad to put something together, but I am also glad to collaborate with anyone else interested on it, comment here if interested and we can figure out how to do that?)

2) Thinking about character nominations.

I suspect it may be harder to get the characters who have lots of associated fic in Harry Potter fandom already approved (Harry, Hermione, Ron, Draco, Sirius, Remus, etc.) but a lot easier to get characters who are either original characters in Alternity (Hydra, for example) or barely mentioned (Hi, Sally-Anne), because it's a lot more clear that they're different from the massive overwhelming amount of Potterverse fic out there.

Anyway, this is the place where coordination helps, to make sure there's a fairly wide-spread set of characters nominated, but having some idea of character nomination desires would also help with drafting the evidence post (in terms of being able to describe characters in groups and making sure characters people might want to have nominated are explicitly explained.)

3) That our evidence post be clear about the 'we are now done with the project', 'we have multiple methods of engaging with the canon', 'the player-authors think Yuletide would be awesome', 'there is a wiki', all of which I think help our case this year and were much more nebulous last year.

(One of the challenges with fanworks is the feeling that the people not involved in creating the fanwork have much less access to data about it, and the results will be unsatisfying.)

Comments

[gwendolyngrace]

I think it's an awesome idea to make the case for Alternity, though the restrictions on the "more popular characters" is a decided downside.

However, as I mentioned on the thread where this came up first, I think regardless of whether we are deemed eligible for Yuletide, a fic exchange through this community might be hella fun, anyway. And we would not need to restrict people to the OCs or the "virtually unrecognizable from canon" characters.

[batrachian]

I will cheerfully support Alternity-in-Yuletide, though my support is likely to be limited to providing slots for character nominations. And, of course, requesting/offering to write for once it gets approved. *fingers crossed*

[atheilen.livejournal.com]

Yesss.

Which is to say, I volunteer as tribute to help make this happen. I'm fairly swamped at work at the moment but if you need some testimony from a non-player, I can help come up with a few paragraphs...maybe something more detailed than I did last year?

Also, if we're coordinating noms in this post, I'd like to do what (IIRC) I did last year and request Team Slytherin...so with 4 slots, I would choose Antonin, Hydra, Sally-Anne, and Daphne.

If we want to do a Google doc or something, my email is sarah dot trick at gmail dot com.

[jenett]

I am also slightly swamped at the moment, but sometime in the next few days, I'll see if I can come up with a draft and we can kick it around and make it awesome. I'll kick a note here when I have something.

[elisem]

I'd help nominate, though I do not know the way.

(Darn, where's a Frodo icon when I need one?)

[jenett]

Ok, I have a draft evidence post (They've said on one of the eligibility posts that a GDoc with details is fine for length, so, doing that for ease of editing.)

Anyone with the link can currently edit, but feel free to either edit, put in comments, or make notes here, whatever you feel comfortable with.

I'd love to find a couple more examples (either individual posts or fairly well-contained events) to add to the samples list, that give an idea of the dynamics of Alternity and some of the history and background. (the two in there are the Y3 play and the Intra Profundis initial post.)

It feels to me like avoiding really major spoilers would be nice, but we could probably do a couple with spoiler notes too.

[naomikritzer]

Looks good to me. Are you going to post it? If you want more comments you might want to start a new thread.

[(Anonymous)]

Looks good to me too!