The First Annual Canalave Library Yuletide

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.

And here we are! Welcome to the Canalave Yuletide, a forum-wide fanwork exchange event! The concept of a Yuletide is pretty simple: sign up, create something for someone else, and get something in return. Who you'll get to create for is a complete mystery. What prompts will you get? What characters will you be including in your work? Who knows, and that's half the fun! The other half, of course, is the receiving!


How does it work?
During the sign-up phase (now to September 7), participants will submit forms (see below) via Discord DM to your head librarian, Minty. These will be collected until sign-ups close, at which point all the profiles will be mixed up and matched (based on the Recipient part of each profile) in order to create sender-recipient pairs. Assignments (the second half of the profile) will be sent out to participants via DM, and from that point onward, the event's in their hands.

During the creation phase (September 9 to December 15), senders will need to submit works of substantial value. (See rules for further details.) Every two weeks, there will also be check-in DMs to ensure that everyone's still on task, and yes, you should respond to them.

Once completed, senders will need to send their work back to the librarians via DM. Details about this process are listed below.

On December 16, we enter what's known as Yuletide Madness, a week-long event wherein we take a look at which requests have yet to be filled. Then, we post all of the unfilled prompts publicly at once to ensure that everyone gets a fanwork on Christmas morning. If you're a sender whose prompt is posted, you'll want to contact the librarians immediately to let them know your status so your prompt can be taken down. If you see a prompt you'd like to fill, however, contact a librarian to claim it.

On December 23, the creation phase closes, and all works are due.

That leaves us with the reveal phase. This happens on December 25. Throughout the course of the event, all stories we receive will be uploaded to a folder on Google Drive and renamed after the recipient. On Christmas morning, this folder will be made public, and recipients will be able to access and comment on their stories via Google Drive's commenting system.

Once reveals are up, senders are then allowed (and encouraged!) to post their work in the appropriate forum. (Fanfics go to Fic, art goes to Art, and so on.)


How do we sign up?
As mentioned earlier, if you'd like to participate, you need to fill out this form in its entirety. Send the filled-out form back to the mods via PM. DO NOT POST YOUR SIGN-UP FORM IN THIS THREAD, AND DON’T POST IT IN THE PUBLIC CHANNELS, EITHER.

Final note! While ideally, we’d like for you to fill out the complete form, it actually is possible to only partially fill this out. However, be warned that the first part of the You, the Sender part (the question about pinch-hitting) is not optional, and any blank field after that will be considered a wild card. As in, if you don’t fill out the rest of the sender’s portion, you’ll still get a prompt, but it will be a randomly selected one. If you don’t fill out the recipient’s part, then your sender will be instructed to go wild. Please note we are not liable for any chaos that ensues.



Special note: No, you do not need to sign up for the forums in order to participate, although it’s preferred. You do, however, need to be a part of the Canalave Library community, which means if you’re not a member of the forum, you must be a member of the Discord server.


How are assignments generated specifically?
As mentioned above, the librarians will take all of the forms you send and compile them in a list. Then, to the best of our abilities, we'll match you with a recipient, based on what you've mentioned in the senders’ field and what everyone else has mentioned in the recipients’. In order to make things interesting, there will also be randomization involved, especially if we have multiple assignments that can't be matched with any specific sender.

In other words, for the most part, we'll pair your writing preferences off with (what we feel to be the best matching) readers' preferences. If, however, we can't decide in some cases, we'll be flipping coins and pairing you off.

There is also a special additional note concerning fanwork of fanwork. Because recipients are absolutely welcome to ask for fanwork of their own fics, comics, and so forth, we’ll also make an effort to avoid pairing you with a sender who has not reviewed your work at least once. That way, no one will be forced to play catch-up during the creation period.


How does the creation phase work?
At the start of the writing phase, every sender will receive a DM containing specific instructions and their prompts. Then you'll be left to their own devices, save for the occasional check-in, until the end of the writing phase.

Once you’re finished with your work, send it back to your liaison (whoever sent your instructions) via DM. To do so, you may either send your work directly to your liaison via Discord DM as an attachment, or you may upload your work to a file hosting service (Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.) and send it as a link. If you’ve created your work on Google Docs or use Google Drive, then a sharing link will be preferred, as we can then simply save it to the Yuletide Tree directly. Please enable comments and name your work after your recipient in order to ensure it’s properly formatted for the Yuletide Tree.

Important note! When sending your work to your liaison, please include the following form to make putting the Yuletide tree together easier:



After your work is submitted, you can kick back and relax ... unless you signed up to be a pinch-hitter, anyway. If you're a pinch-hitter, you may be called on to create for an additional recipient. See below for further details.


What happens when people can't finish? (ALSO: What's a pinch-hitter?)
Like in the original Yuletide, there are deadlines here.

If an sender realizes they can't finish (because, y'know, holiday season and all), they'd have until December 15 to drop out consequence-free by sending the librarians a message saying they can't make it. Their assignment will be sent off to all people who specified that they'd be up for pinch-hitting.* Someone will hopefully come forward to pinch-hit, and the Yuletide progresses as if nothing happened.

If the sender drops out between December 16 to December 22, their assignment will be sent off to pinch-hitters, but they'll also be banned from the next Yuletide. Repeat offenders will be banned from all Yuletides.

If the sender just straight-up never shows up and never says anything and if the pinch-hitter can't finish in time, the orphaned prompts will be collected and offered up to participants as part of a belated Yuletide drive. These works won't make the story reveal phase for obvious time-constraint-related reasons, but we hope to get you something by January 1.

* Pinch-hitter: If not already evident, a pinch-hitter is an sender who agrees to take on orphaned assignments. 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?
Check-ins are the all-important periods in which we make sure all is well in the highly oiled Yuletide machine. How it works is simple: every two weeks, we'll send every sender a DM asking about how they're doing. All you have to do is send a quick response back so we know you're all right.

Please note! Check-ins are mandatory, but even a one-line response telling us how things're going is totally fine by us. However, failing to respond to two or more check-ins in a row will tell us that you're AWOL, and your prompt may be handed off to a pinch-hitter. This is so we can guarantee that everyone gets a prompt at the end of the event. So in other words, please respond to avoid getting marked down as AWOL! D:


Rules
We've gone this far without discussing rules. So what are they?

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 sign up, to submit your work, 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, guys.

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 recipient gets a decent-sized gift, you're good.

8. No, you cannot collaborate with another sender in order to finish your assignment. 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 Minty. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to hit her 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 (as this can cause confusion).


Good luck and happy holidays!