Entry tags:

fic: i can hear the truth auditioning

i can hear the truth auditioning (14964 words) by Lirazel
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Pitt (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Melissa "Mel" King/Frank Langdon
Characters: Melissa "Mel" King, Frank Langdon, Abby Langdon, Original Characters
Additional Tags: Mel-centric, Post-Season/Series 01, Emotional Infidelity, this is as close to cheating fic as you're ever going to get from me, so enjoy it while you can, but there's no actual infidelity here, really this is an anti-infidelity fic in a lot of ways, the mel in my mind just wouldn't do that, like i'm glad y'all are having fun, but this is my take, mel!whump, only emotionally this time though, y'all mel cries so much in this i'm so sorry, she does get her happy ending though i'm not a monster, Angst with a Happy Ending, frank langdon is about to be the most divorced man in america, subtitle: mel works through some stuff over the course of five conversations with four different people
Summary:

She keeps her head down, focuses on work and Becca and studying for boards, and all the time, she’s thinking of Emily.

Mel had thought she was so pretty and cool, the first time Dad brought her to dinner. Emily wasn’t the only guest—there had been at least two other grad students invited, too, but Mel only remembers Emily’s red-brown hair tumbling over her shoulders, the hazel eyes that looked almost as big as an anime character’s, the way she talked with her hands about the Victorian novels that lined the bookshelves in Dad’s study. After dinner, Mel and Becca had agreed that Emily looked like a Disney princess, and when Becca said something about it a few days later to Mom, Mel didn’t understand why Mom’s laughter was brittle.

Entry tags:

books

Weekend reading

I hadn't planned on reading Katabasis by R.F. Kuang, both because I hadn't really clicked with any of her previous books and because I've seen mostly negative reviews of Katabasis specifically, but it was available as a short-term/lucky/skip-the-line loan on Libby and who am I to look a gift book in the mouth. I'm really enjoying it! Two rival graduate students of Analytical Magick descend to the underworld to rescue their dissertation advisor so they can graduate with his valuable recommendation; it's great for spooky season, with vivid descriptions of the very nasty ways one can die from doing magick wrong and something darkly whimsical about the version of Hell that they navigate with the ambiguous aid of the different accounts of underworld journeys (Orpheus, Dante, etc.) as filtered through alternate translations and theories of interpretation and academic technobabble. ( ... )

Back to the theme of Bad Times on Boats with Into the Raging Sea by Rachel Slade, a nonfiction account of the 2015 sinking of an American cargo ship after capitalism led it to sail directly into a hurricane. Technically focused on unfolding the narrative of a specific event (the loss of the El Faro in Hurricane Joaquin) but throws in a bunch of stuff for context, such as how hurricanes are formed and measured, the history of U.S. shipbuilding and shipping industries, etc.

🔸

Name: lise

Age:

30s

I mostly post about:

every day interactions, projects i’m working on, movies, mostly just my every day life! i’m probably going to start posting some photography too.

My hobbies are:

photography, cinema, writing, art in general, cooking, reading, watching obscure films & shorts, learning italian, thrifting, collecting vhs tapes

My fandoms are:

not really in fandoms much, but some of my media interests include: horror (halloween series, five nights at freddy’s, no i’m not a human, giallo films, killer7, deadly premonition, etc), speculative fiction (kathe koja especially), psychological thrillers, internet ephemera, weird niches in general. i’m really into things like mannequins, dolls, masks, and animatronics as well.

I'm looking to meet people who:

are artsy & weird! people who always have a project going (doesn’t have to art related - stem can be included here too), activists,

My posting schedule tends to be: just returned to dw (lifelong online journal-er though) sand i am fairly busy so it’ll most likely be weekly

When I add people, my dealbreakers are:

not really anything besides the obvious! just be respectful & tag warnings appropriately :)

Before adding me, you should know: i had a deadjournal since i was 11, i think that says everything about me hahaha

Entry tags:

Pinch Hits & Mid Sign-Ups Notes

Sign-ups close at 9pm UTC 24 October. We're more than halfway through sign-ups - if you haven't signed up, get in quick! If you have signed up, we're glad to have you. Please check all your details are correct.

If your sign-up includes a letter link, please make sure that link works for all viewers! In particular, if your letter is on tumblr, please set it up to be viewable for people who do NOT have tumblr. If you're using Google docs, we recommend linking a web-published version of your letter.

Pinch hits

Pinch hits are a major part of Yuletide. Pinch hits are writing assignments that need to be claimed by volunteers, and pinch hitters are the writers who claim and fulfil them. Currently, we publish pinch hit details on

yuletide_pinch_hits, but we also send out notifications of new pinch hits to members of the Yuletide Discord server who have taken on the "yulephs" role, and to anyone subscribed to the Google Group for Yuletide pinch hits.

If you're interested in helping out by taking on extra assignments, please check that you're signed up to receive notifications by one of these methods! We'll send a test message out soon.

Sign-ups

We've introduced some new features this year! You can now request up to 8 fandoms, and you may fill out a form (linked from the sign-up form) if there are people you would prefer not to match to. Beginning in 2023 we have also included an additional tag checkbox where you can specify whether you want all of your requested characters to appear, or if you’d be happy with particular combinations you specify, or any combination your writer chooses.

If you have questions about any of these, please email us at yuletideadmin@gmail.com! We'd like to make sure things go smoothly for you.

Requesting characters can be a tricky aspect of Yuletide, so just in case, here's a refresher:

If you select 2-4 characters in a request, you can only match to someone who offers them all, even if you’ve indicated in the additional tags that you’re happy with any one of them. If there are 4 or fewer characters nominated, and you’d be happy with a story about any of them, selecting no characters gives you the widest range of matches.

If you select no characters in a request, that means your writer may write about any nominated character or about the fandom world in general. Please only do this when you'd genuinely be happy with a story about any nominated character, or the world.

Schedule, Rules, & Collection | Contact Mods | Participant DW | Participant LJ | Pinch Hits on DW | Discord | Tag set | Tag set app
Please either comment logged-in or sign a name. Unsigned anonymous comments will be left screened.

Entry tags:

lily watches

Lily watches: (half of) KPop Demon Hunters

Finally managed to watch this at a group showing, although I was late and missed most of the first half. Thanks to tumblr osmosis, however, I was able to jump right in without missing a beat (heh).

It's... fine? I'm not a K-pop person, but the songs were catchy, the dialogue was snappy, and the animation was fun. You can tell this was done by the same animation team that did The Mitchells vs. the Machines in terms of faces, etc. I thought the end was a bit rushed and it would have been nice to see a bit more of what the "new world" looks like (what happened to Celine, etc, etc) but overall, it was good. I can see why it's super-popular even though it doesn't trigger any of that obsessive fandom impulses for me.

(Honestly, it's refreshing to watch something, enjoy a normal amount and then move on, I kind of wish that happened more often.)

Maybe someday I'll get to see the first half, although I'm not sure how, since it's stuck on Netflix forever with no DVD release. I'm sure Sony is regretting that deal right now. (You've heard of "sold to One Direction", get ready for "sold to Netflix".)

Also kinda ironic that this new stand-alone film that wasn't a sequel/reboot/existing franchise is probably going to become a franchise now because it was so popular, but that's how it goes.

AWS outage

DW is seeing some issues due to today's Amazon outage. For right now it looks like the site is loading, but it may be slow. Some of our processes like notifications and journal search don't appear to be running and can't be started due to rate limiting or capacity issues. DW could go down later if Amazon isn't able to improve things soon, but our services should return to normal when Amazon has cleared up the outage.

Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.

Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.

Entry tags:

Virtual CONfabulation 2025

This weekend, I fulfilled my goal of showing a premiere vid at a con AND actually attending the vidshow at Virtual CONfabulation and it was great!! Both of my vids were for Thunderbolt Fantasy and hopefully convinced the ~35 people in the audience to consider checking out the wuxia fantasy puppet show:

-"Feel the Thunder(bolt Fantasy)" (premiere)
-"Charisma Uniqueness Nerve & Talent"
-Full vidshow playlist

I was not expecting to be first in the line-up, which was a little nerve-wracking but aside from a few glitches in the host's Internet, everything went well. Watching everyone's reactions in real time in the chat was a lot of fun and makes me feel like I'm on the right track in terms of overall vidding skills and getting the reaction(s) I want from the audience.

I also had the advantage that most if all of my audience has never seen budaixi before and thus had no idea what they're in for, so everything came as a surprise. I try to design my vids on two levels - one for first-timers, and one for people who have already seen the show - so that the vid works regardless, but I think it's easier to pack a punch if this is someone's first time with the entire genre, because it's all new and different.

One thing I enjoyed was that everyone was fine going in fandom-blind and enjoying the vids even if they weren't familiar with the fandom, which was nice. I also enjoyed seeing a lot of vids in radically different styles and subjects than I would have necessarily sought out on my own - I have been mostly focused on upbeat action with the puppets, so slow, moody, atmospheric pieces felt like such a revelation - "Oh, yeah, I can dothat" - which is an excellent reminder!!

I really want to do a TBF "fandom intro vid" and while ""Feel the Thunder(bolt Fantasy)" isn't quite what I originally have in mind, it's not a bad introduction, either. It is basically Shang Bu Huan being awesome for 3 minutes, with an emphasis on lightning/thunder/magic effects, and I'm really proud of how it turned out in terms of timing and escalation. Other favorite bits include the transition from first chorus to second verse that makes it look like Shang pops out of nowhere, the implication that Lin Xue Ya is calling Shang "easy" (lolol, gotta get my shipping in somewhere), and the musical bridge that is musical in-universe as well.

Meanwhile, "Charisma Uniqueness Nerve & Talent" is a very self-indulgent vid made at the suggestion of a fandom friend, and a tribute to the best fight scene ever filmed with puppets. This one is more narrative, and follows the major plot beats while still throwing a few surprises in. This was so much fun to make and hits so many of my favorite narrative tropes!!

Highlights for me include the countdown to to the fight where I built tension by interweaving the history that brought the combatants to this moment, and how I was able to creatively use a limited amount of footage to my advantage. After a year and a half of editing budaixi fanvids, I feel like I've finally gotten to the point where I can intercut a fight scene from different scenes while keeping the action visually coherent (but it helps when I am given such good material to work from) - I was a little nervous I had done my job too well and people would wonder if I'd "done" anything, but ultimately decided that was the price of success. (There are also a bunch of subtle tells if you look for them, but most people probably won't see them on first watch if they're not familiar with the source material.)

All of which to say, I feel like this was a real milestone for me as a Real Vidder (whatever that actually means, hahaha) in terms of personal goals and community, and I hope to submit to similar events in the future and attend when I can.

Current Mood: hungry
Current Music: Who's Afraid of Little Ol' Me? ~Taylor Swift

Entry tags:

books

Books 9 & 10

I finally got my hands on a copy of ( Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins ) I enjoyed this infinitely more than the last one (and still managed to hate Snow even more). It was heartbreaking and was the story Haymitch deserved. I also enjoyed the epilogue that wrapped everything together.

I am almost finished with ( The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson ) Just as many twists as the first book in the series. I've been reading this with Elijah and it has been fun to read and discuss with him as we go.

Entry tags:

The Far Side of the World - Patrick O'Brian

Finished The Far Side of the World by Patrick O'Brian, which I started back in July and have been periodically returning to— it turned out to be a good book for piecemeal reading, actually, because like many of O'Brian's novels it is less of a beginning-to-end narrative and more a handful of fairly short plot arcs and set pieces in a trenchcoat (affectionate), and the running theme of whalers/the whaling industry was especially interesting after reading Moby Dick earlier this year. Technically a re-read, but I had apparently forgotten everything that happens in it?? Not for a lack of memorable incidents, though, including a rescue at sea by the all-women crew of a Polynesian pahi and a below-decks love triangle with a 133% fatality rate. ( ... )

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: at my writing desk
Current Music: twenty one pilots - city walls

tipping my phrygian cap toward you in a cheerful greeting

Before adding me, you should know: that i am open to making friends with people who are very different from me! i think it's wonderful and healthy to be friends with people who have a different worldview from me, and i always try to be nice and respectful, even when i don't agree with someone.

basic info: tombstuck, mid 20s, missouri usa

gender and sexuality: bisexual, poly (not currently open to new partners), trans, enby, femboy, they/them

other identifiers: alterhuman, gnome/elf otherhearted

my vibes: silly, horny, friendly, excitable, odd and unusual

I mostly post about: daily life, my current exciting interests, music, and fandom

My fandoms are: I read widely in any fandom if the summary and tags catch my eye, and if the author is a friend! my fandoms in particular are supernatural, homestuck, and marvel stuff (specifically spider-man right now). But I have a lot of other fandoms I'm less active in too.

I'm looking to meet people who: are interested in my writing and will listen to me yapping about it (i will do the same for others!), people who will interact with my journal entries... um, not a dealbreaker by any means but it would be nice to know some other alterhumans, therians, otherkin and things like that, because my brother is a therian, i'm otherhearted, and i don't know any other alterhumans at all.

My posting schedule tends to be: very sporadic! i just created my account recently so it's up in the air, but i plan on being here every day for the foreseeable future.

When I add people, my dealbreakers are: i'll add anyone who adds me, but i will probably remove them if i have personal issues with them after that.

i hope to hear from some of you soon!~

(no subject)

Name: Agnes

Age: mid 20s

I mostly post about: personal stuff and fandom equally, also my creative projects (I'm a huge writer and artist!) I also talk about my tech projects and such. Health struggles & disability/mental health activism and destigmatization. Cooking. Life goings-on. My OCs. I'm trying to get back into using dreamwidth more, so I'd love to make some new friends!

My hobbies are: writing, digital art, watching tv, making video games, playing video games, crafting, thrifting, technology (mostly self-hosting and personal websites right now), cooking...

My fandoms are: I'm a huge science fiction fan, so right now it's Babylon 5, The Orville, Star Trek (mostly lower decks and star trek online), etc. Also super into Yellowjackets and Psych at the moment.

I'm looking to meet people who: don't mind my journal being a little all over the place, are kind and accepting, love science fiction, art, writing, tech, or making OCs, or creativity in general. People who are spiritual but queer-affirming, pro-choice and open-minded. People who like to talk and don't mind if I'm awkward. People who share my fandoms, especially my special interest which is currently The Orville. Other neurodiverse folks. Or anyone who is cool with the things I mention here!

My posting schedule tends to be: sporadic

When I add people, my dealbreakers are: Racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, fatphobia. Please don't be a bigot. Also, I don't wish to add anyone who identifies as an "anti" or believes certain types of fiction should inherently be censored, and will unadd for this kind of behavior.

Before adding me, you should know: I have autism and dissociative identity disorder. These things make it a little hard for me to communicate, but I promise I always mean well. I also have memory issues.

Current Mood: amused

Entry tags:

signal boosting: Trope Flip Fest

A friend linked to this tumblr: https://bitimdrake.tumblr.com/post/797526051236577280

It's a list of tropes that have been flipped, so for example instead of the "Only one bed" trope, it's "Too many beds" trope. I'm cackling just reading the flipped tropes, and some of them are giving me Ideas, so I thought I'd boost in case others are looking for some good prompts right now.

Current Mood: creative

Entry tags:

communal_creators

Communal Creators wrap-up

communal_creators is a creative challenge where you pledge to be creative for a certain amount of time daily OR to finish projects of varying size. We have writers, yarn artists, vidders, bakers, someone making music - if it's creative, it counts. The current round ended last night, so here is a recap of what I did during the month.

I had pledged Time Tier II, to average 30 minutes a day of creative activity. I didn't pledge to finish any projects, because most of projects were massive things that I likely couldn't complete in a month's time.

[Image Description: A screenshot of a spreadsheet, showing I averaged over an hour of creative activity daily during Communal Creators.]

Crochet saw the most activity, with Smallweb coming second. I crocheted on 20 days and touched 5 different projects. The majority of the work went to my Motion Picture Mosaic Cardi, which saw 13 hours of activity.

"Smallweb" was my moniker for work on my Neocities site. This saw a LOT of work in September because

smallweb September was happening and double-dipping on challenges? {Yes, please.} I did smallweb work on 12 days, with 8 of those being in September for 10 hours. Another 3.5 hours happened in October. This was the area that saw most success, I feel; I finished copying over files from Dreamwidth which meant FFBE season 1 is DONE. I also completed documentation for FFXI:Rise of the Zilart and started Chains of Promathia. I'm quite pleased with the work I did, though I need to get back to it if I ever want to finish the site.

Knitting was my third most active category. I knitted on 13 days, on 5 different projects. Most active was the Central Park Hoodie, which saw ~5 hours 40 minutes.

I am VERY PLEASED that some of my creative activity took the shape of writing, and that's thanks to

ladiesbingo. I worked on THREE different fics for it! That's so exciting to me! Alas, it quickly fell off, and I didn't touch the writing in the last two weeks. I'd really like to get back to it sometime, but finding time is the problem. Also, I need to do some canon review.

I feel this round of

communal_creators was a qualified success. I'm very pleased with my output. Thanks to

senmut for hosting!

Entry tags:

reading,
viewing

wednesday reads and things

Hiya! It's been a while! I blame Yuletide. (The preparatory work is a Lot, even with all the comods and tagmods who do an amazing job of putting things together. So, make me feel like it was worthwhile: go sign up! 😁)

But I have been consuming media!

What I recently finished reading:

Chaos Vector and Catalyst Gate, the second and third books in the space-opera Protectorate series by Megan E. O'Keefe. I enjoyed the series overall, though I feel like O'Keefe slowed things down and lost momentum after the sequence of clever twists from the first book. The actual story behind the story turned out to be less novel and captivating than I was expecting, and although a few of the reveals were "a-HA!" great, some parts just felt as though the worldbuilding was being done on the fly, and the plot built around to justify it.

The writing occasionally felt a little fanficcy to me, like, "let's express found family sentiment here! Let's throw in an obstacle that turns out not to be one!" but overall it was easy to read and fairly entertaining.

Europe in Autumn by Dave Hutchinson, which like the first book of the previous series is a reread so I can read the rest of the books in the series. This one I first read in 2014, and as with the Protectorate books, I am stunned at how much I completely don't remember at all. Here's my review from 2014:

A whole lot of elements in this book hit my buttons perfectly. There is the alternate-history/near-future aspect, which centers on the interesting idea that the EU has not just fallen apart but splintered into dozens of tiny pocket states (and I have to say, there was a strange resonance to reading the bit about Scotland's explosive parting from the UK only a month after the real-world vote failed). There is the largely Eastern European setting, the Estonian and Polish and Hungarian characters, which read delightfully exotic to this American (though I wonder how it will read to my European friends!). The writing is strong, never getting in the way of the story but frequently delighting me with clever phrases and evocative images, exactly the style I love reading. And I adored the idea at the heart of the eventual reveal.

But...there were problems. The pacing was a little odd, slow to get going, with scenes (or parts of scenes) that did not obviously contribute to the story. Some, granted, played a part later. But it didn't feel tight to me; yet at the same time, there were all these questions that were answered in oblique ways, or left hanging such that clearly the reader was supposed to connect invisible dots, which made me feel a bit too stupid for the clever author - not as bad as Ken MacLeod's books make me feel (and there were bits of this that were reminiscent of his The Execution Channel, but along those lines. And the cool reveal I mentioned above comes practically at the end of the book - but when I hit it, I felt, that is what I want the book to be about! Not all this preparation stuff! And there wasn't enough about the cool part!

I mostly still agree with this, though I now think the pacing works better for me, maybe because I missed some details before or failed to understand how a later section made use of information from an earlier one. Also - there was an offhand bit of building up the undergirdings of this near-future world, the why of Europe having splintered into micro-polities, involving a pandemic of the "Xian flu" which "had brought back quarantine checks and national borders as a means of controlling the spread of the disease..." and I was, holy shit, this was published in 2014. (This fictional pandemic was 10-20x more deadly than Covid-19, which was certainly bad enough.) Other contributors to European disunity were "Economic collapse, paranoia about asylum seekers – and, of course, GWOT, the ongoing Global War On Terror," and about there I started thinking damn, if it wasn't for the Great Uniter (of everyone else against him) this would be playing out right now...and maybe it will play out here, as the states attempt to sort themselves by political party.

I guess the point is, I enjoyed reading this both as an escape and also as a a warning. On to the second book, which according to my notes I read in 2016 and liked even more (because it was mostly about the cool thing at the end of the first book)!

What I recently finished watching:

Two episodes of Resident Alien which was too cringe for me. I liked the concept, in theory? But the execution was excruciating.

Foundation S3, which - well, another way that civilizations crumble, I guess. I enjoyed it, particularly watching the various Cleons diverge from their assigned paths, but alas the problem with a generation-spanning epic is that the characters you liked in a previous season are (mostly) long dead now. Probably my favorite part was Bayta (and Toran, I guess) who felt very much like Star Wars characters to me.

What I'm still playing but not for much longer:

I'm about to start the endgame sequence (at least, that's what the quest screen tells me) of Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Time to kill those pesky gods!

Entry tags:

books,
tamsyn muir

It's already Wednesday somewhere

Read Rental Person Who Does Nothing by Shoji Morimoto*, a bite-sized memoir from a (new to me) Japanese social media personality about working as, literally, a rental person who does nothing: accompanying people to things they're nervous about or would just rather not do alone; simply being in the room while someone tackles something they've been putting off or talks about something they feel like they can't share with anyone else; holding down a picnic spot at an outdoor festival (as long as the client picks the spot— choosing where to sit would, by definition, be doing something). Fascinating read! It's a mix of anecdotes about the different requests he's gotten and musings on what motivated him to start this "business"**, the ways he does and doesn't craft a persona in his online and IRL presence as "Rental Person", what his clients get out of their interactions, etc.

( Footnotes )

I've been re-reading Tamsyn Muir's Locked Tomb series more or less on a loop since 2021, albeit with longer and longer gaps both during and between books, and to this point recently picked back up on where I left off in Nona the Ninth at some point earlier this year, or possibly late last year. I appear to have last read Gideon in 2023 and Harrow in 2024, so now my goal is to finish Nona this year and then maybe we will get Alecto in 2026...? Have also picked back up on another neglected re-read, The Far Side of the World by Patrick O'Brian.

Currently listening to the audiobook of Susanna Clarke's Piranesi, read by Chiwetel Ejiofor— I've been meaning to revisit this since reading it when it first came out in 2020, and it makes a really good audiobook. On re-reading, it's even more obvious that anyone familiar with the book Clarke quoted as an epigraph would immediately know what's up with Piranesi and the Other, although in my defense, I've still never actually read ( that book ) and so Piranesi reminds me, more than anything, of The Tempest.

Entry tags:

Creator Letter: Yuletide 2025

Hi, I'm atamascolily on A03, DW, and Tumblr, and I'm excited to be participating in Yuletide again this year.

I try to keep my requests as open-ended as possible, but here are a few notes that might be helpful if you're writing a fic for me. I am happy to receive treats as well!

( Thunderbolt Fantasy )

( 館シリーズ - 綾辻行人 | The Bizarre House Mysteries - Ayatsuji Yukito )

( GODZILLA Trilogy (Anime 2017) )

Entry tags:

2025,
sign-ups

Yuletide 2025 Sign-Ups Open

Please read this post even if you have signed up before!

After reading this post, please look at the tag set to see what fandoms are available this year, and make a shortlist of what you plan to offer and request. (The same fandoms can be on both lists, if you want.)

Then sign up at the collection. We recommend you allow at least half an hour to sign up. While you can edit your sign-up over the next week, you will not be able to make any changes after sign-ups close at 9pm UTC 24 October.

If you would like to avoid matching to up to three other participants, with limitations discussed here, you may do so by filling out a Google Form from a link within the AO3 form. If you want to use this feature but cannot use Google Forms, please email the mods. Do Not Match requests will close at the same time as signups.

Requests

You can request 3-8 fandoms

Each fandom must be different

You can request 0*-4 characters in each fandom

*Requesting 0 characters means "I am happy to receive any nominated character for this fandom. My author gets to choose which one(s)". That includes Worldbuilding for fandoms where Worldbuilding is nominated as a character tag. If no characters are nominated for the fandom, requesting 0 characters means “I am happy to receive any character or worldbuilding for this fandom.”

"AND" matching means your writer must include every character you select. If you are happy with a subset of your selected characters, indicate this with Additional Tags, and clarify any exceptions in your optional details.

You can only request characters from the tag set, though your optional prompts may mention other characters to appear too.

In some fandoms, you can request Worldbuilding as a character. You can find guidance on that here.

AND matching and additional tags
Generally, when you select characters in your sign-up form, it means you want and expect your gift to include all of those characters. This is a key principle for matching and assignments. However, some people like to give their author further options. We are using the Additional Tags section of the form for this.

If you requested 0 characters, or you want all the characters you selected to appear, you will tick the first Additional Tag option, which says "My gift must feature all of my chosen character tags (if 0: any from tag set)". If you think your situation might be different, please read last year’s post about additional tags and select additional tags that are right for your requests. This information is also in the sign-up form.

Optional Details and Do Not Wants (DNWs)
"Optional details" = prompts, ideas, likes, explanations of how you see the canon. Optional details and DNWs can be recorded in the main text section of your requests.

Optional details are optional (ODAO)! Your writer doesn't have to follow your prompts, though they must avoid your DNWs. You don't have to give prompts here, either - though prompts and ideas may be a more inspiring first impression than a list of DNWs on its own. Prompts may be particularly useful if you are requesting a Worldbuilding tag.

See this 2020 post for some considerations when writing your DNWs. Last year, we also clarified our rules and guidance about DNWs.

The Optional Details section of your AO3 requests is especially relevant if you have selected option two of the additional tags, "My gift must feature all of my chosen character tags; or it may use exceptions I explain in the form". In that case, please use this section of the form for explaining how and when your writer is allowed to leave out some of the characters you selected.

Please use minimal html in the optional details field. No images, please.

Please also note in the form if you're able to receive treats - or if you don't want them! Yuletide has a long-established culture of extra gifts, but if you created your account recently, you may have extra gifts turned off by default. Please check your AO3 preferences, and then state in your sign-up form whether you do or do not accept treats.

Letters
You can write prompts and preferences in another space, such as Dreamwidth, Livejournal, Google Docs, or Tumblr, and put a link in your sign-up. This is known as a "letter". Some people write letters; some don't. DNWs and character subsets that are listed in a letter but not in the Optional Details AO3 textbox cause confusion and difficulty for creators, and will not be enforced by the mods. Otherwise, your letter is an extension of your optional details and is treated the same way.

Important: You cannot add a letter after sign-ups close.

Offers

You can offer 4-10 fandoms

Each fandom must be different

You can offer 2-20 specific characters in each

If you want to offer a fandom that has 0-1 characters available, tick the "Any" box

If you are willing to write any combination of nominated characters, including Worldbuilding for fandoms where it is nominated, tick the "Any" box

"Worldbuilding" can also be selected as a character for many fandoms. Please check here to see how we're using it.

Offers are secret! Please don't declare openly what you're offering.

If you have several fandoms in which you want to offer to write Any nominated characters, you can make your last offer a "Bucket Offer". You can read about bucket offers in the Sign-ups section of the AO3 FAQ. This older tutorial has pictures!

Signing up!

The sign-up form is here.

Signups will remain open - and editable - until 9pm UTC 24 October.

You may only sign up to Yuletide with one AO3 account. You must be aged 18 or over to sign up.

You can find more sign-up information at the Yuletide 2025 FAQ

There is also specific guidance about how to use Additional Tags

Please check the tag set or the app when signing up. The autocomplete drop-down list in the sign-up form may not show all available characters. If they're in the tag set, you can enter them manually.

Sign-Up Summary

The list of requested/offered fandoms will be available after five people have signed up. Bucket offers do not show up in the list. Checking the sign-up summary for people you may be able to write for is a good idea - although many people sign up at the last minute. The sign-up summary says it updates hourly; in practice it may update less frequently.

Fandoms at 1-1 on the sign-up summary may mean that the same person is offering and requesting the fandom, not that there is a match.

Welcome to Yuletide!

Feel free to ask us questions.

Bonus! Yuletide advertisements

Thank you to

crantz (who also made images for us to share in 2019 and in 2020). Please use these to encourage friends and other fans to take part!

Yuletide exchange promotional image using mountain forest scenery. Text says Write off the beaten path - Yuletide Rare Fandoms Exchange.

To repost this image, copy this html:
<a href="https://archiveofourown.org/collections/yuletide2025/profile"><img src="https://www.yuletide.fandom.exchange/images/yuletidegraphic1.jpg" alt="Yuletide exchange promotional image using mountain forest scenery. Text says Write off the beaten path - Yuletide Rare Fandoms Exchange."></a>

Yuletide exchange promotional image using an image of an 1887 ice palace. Text says Travel the Worlds of Imagination - Yuletide Rare Fandoms Exchange.

To repost this image, copy this html:
<a href="https://archiveofourown.org/collections/yuletide2025/profile"><img src="https://www.yuletide.fandom.exchange/images/yuletidegraphic2.jpg" alt="Yuletide exchange promotional image using an image of an 1887 ice palace. Text says Travel the Worlds of Imagination - Yuletide Rare Fandoms Exchange."></a>

Entry tags:

Author Questions (and a question for you!)

Tagset corrections are in, and signups are opening soon! It’s just about time to decide what you’ll be requesting and offering.

This year, you can request eight fandoms! Previously, it was six. Because of that, we're reviewing our process for sending author questions.

Each year, we receive questions from authors about their recipient’s requests. These might include clarification on prompts or requests to understand how a DNW applies to a specific fandom–for example, does a DNW for character death include discussion of deaths that occur in canon?

We’re always happy to pass these questions along! Please always contact the mods directly rather than reaching out to the recipient yourself.

Traditionally, when we send these questions to recipients, we try to disguise the fandom the author plans to write for, so the gift is still a surprise. If the question is generic and applies to all fandoms, we can pass it along as-is. If the question is specific to one fandom, our team of volunteers writes decoy questions for the other fandoms and sends along the whole set.

This is fun for us to do, but it takes time. It's also extra work for the recipients to read and respond to multiple questions. This year, as we’re allowing up to 8 requested fandoms (which could mean up to 7 mod-created questions), it seems like a good time to check in and see if our participants find it helpful.

So, a poll! Going forward, which would you prefer mods do?

Poll #33725 Author Questions Poll

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 264

View Respondents

Going forward, which would you prefer mods do with author questions?

View Answers

Mods should continue to send decoy questions for all fandoms, along with the author’s actual question, to maximize the mystery of which fandom a recipient will receive. (This is how things work currently.)
41 (15.5%)

Mods should send questions for several fandoms, including the author’s actual question, but possibly not all–even though that could narrow down which fandom a recipient may receive.
213 (80.7%)

Something else (Please let us know in comments!)
10 (3.8%)

Keep in mind the question may be from a potential treat writer, so receiving questions for a particular set of fandoms isn’t a guarantee that your final gift will be in one of those fandoms.

We may not necessarily change our process this year based on community feedback, but it will be helpful in making our decision!

We'd also love to hear from you if you'd like to share a past experience with sending or receiving questions! If that has never happened to you, we hope you enjoy this peek behind the administrative curtain.

Schedule, Rules, & Collection | Contact Mods | Tag Set | Tag Set App | Community DW | Community LJ | Discord | Pinch hits on Dreamwidth
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Entry tags:

The Untamed, Harry Potter, SVSS, DCU, Star Wars, Heaven Official's Blessing and Murder Bot Vid rec

It's been many months since I've posted recs and I realized I had over 40 Untamed fic recs. To keep the list more manageable I cut it in half and will post the next half next weekend.

( The Untamed )
( Star Wars )
( Heaven Official's Blessing )
( Harry Potter )
( DCU )
( The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System )
( Vids )

Entry tags:

Do-Not-Match Option - LIMITED Yuletide edition

Tag set housekeeping

We've removed Mouthwashing (Video Game) as that was approved in error. Sorry for getting your hopes up, nominator!

烏は主を選ばない | Karasu wa Aruji wo Erabanai | Yatagarasu: The Raven Does Not Choose Its Master (Anime): It’s come to our attention that Nazukihiko and Wakamiya are the same person, so we’re merging those characters.

Nominator of Luca (The History of Sound) - it looks like the Wikipedia page for this movie incorrectly listed Luca as the name of Lionel's lover in Rome; according to IMDB and the original stories this movie is based on, it's Vincent (who was also nominated), so we're deleting Luca.

Thank you for all the tag set issues you’ve let us know about so far! Please continue to check the tag set and let us know of further corrections we should make. Please tell us about these corrections before 9am UTC, Monday 13 October, so we can fix them before sign-ups.

Limited Do-Not-Match option

Most of the time, the person assigned to create for you in an AO3-based gift exchange, and the person assigned to receive a gift from you, are determined by the tags you select in the sign-up form.

Some exchange moderators also offer participants the option to say "Please do not match me up with [ExampleUserName] or [ExampleUserName2]. I don't want to receive a gift from them or create for them." This feature makes it easier, for example, to offer a fandom requested by six different people including someone you'd prefer to avoid, and have peace of mind that you can still avoid that person.

A Do-Not-Match option is difficult to offer flexibly in Yuletide because of the large number of participants and the large number of people who have only one possible creator or recipient. However, we see a Do-Not-Match option as a valuable tool to reduce friction and make everyone happier, so we intend to offer a limited version of this feature in Yuletide, on a trial basis. Please note that this is not an absolute guarantee you won’t receive a story from one of the people you list.

How it will work

When you sign up on AO3, the sign-up form will also link out to a Google form where you can list the AO3 names of up to 3 people you do not want to match to and can tell us if you want to avoid writing for a person, receiving an assigned gift from a person, or both. We will also ask for those people's AO3 ID numbers, which you can find on their AO3 profiles, and for the email associated with your AO3 name. We will not ask for the reason you wish to avoid a person.

After we run the matching process, we will check all matches against our master Do-Not-Match list. We will take the following actions:

If your assigned recipient or creator is someone you asked to avoid, we will attempt to match you to someone else.

If your only possible recipient is someone you asked to avoid, we will email you to recommend you expand your offers. However, we will leave the match in place if you do not respond in the first 24 hours following the close of sign-ups.

If your only possible creator is someone you asked to avoid, we will send out your requests with initial pinch hits.

If you are the only possible recipient for a creator you asked to avoid, we will leave the match in place, but will prioritize your requests for double-assignment to two creators. [Because of how matching works, there will always be Yuletide participants who start out with two assigned creators; generally we try to choose them at random.]

We will not take the following actions:

We will not ask a creator to drop out or expand their offers if their only possible recipient is someone who would prefer to avoid them.

We will not inform a participant that someone else has asked not to match to them. [This information will be restricted only to the core Yuletide mods, Isis, Morbane, and pendrecarc, and will not be shared with the larger pool of Yuletide assistants.]

We will not review treats for unwanted matches. Putting someone on your Do-Not-Match list will not prevent them from creating a treat for you (but please see FAQs below for other tools to achieve this).

We will not prevent someone on your Do-Not-Match list from claiming you as a pinch hit. We will check our master Do-Not-Match list when assigning pinch hits, so if the first person to claim you is a person you prefer to avoid, we will leave a short amount of time to see if another claim comes in. But we will not hold your pinch hit indefinitely or tell the first creator they aren't allowed to claim you.

We will not ask you why you wish to avoid a particular match.

FAQs (foreseeable/anticipated questions)

Who am I allowed to put on my Do-Not-Match list?
Any three AO3 accounts you would prefer to avoid matching to. This can be for any reason, serious or unserious. Do not tell us the reason, please. If the reason is harassment or similar, we recommend reaching out to the Policy & Abuse team separately. You may only give specific names, rather than a description like "anyone who mostly wants porn".

Can't I just block people I don't want to match to?
No. Adding other users to your block list stops them from giving you a treat (see item AO3-6502 on this news post). It also stops them from being able to comment on your work. However, it does not affect challenge matching. A person you have blocked can be assigned to create for you, and you can be assigned to create for them.

Wait, am I allowed to block people in Yuletide?
Yes. Feel free to use the blocking feature to improve your AO3 experience. However, blocking someone and also matching to them could lead to unhappiness for both of you - so please consider using all the tools at your disposal to avoid matching to people you have blocked. This could mean choosing not to offer a fandom if you suspect it has been requested by a person you wish to avoid, or it could mean using the Do-Not-Match option for people you have blocked.

What other AO3 tools exist to manage my gift experience?
If you wish, you can choose to receive gifts only from assigned writers in a gift exchange or people who have claimed your prompts in a prompt meme. This is sometimes described as turning treats on and off. If you created your account after February 2022, please review this setting in your AO3 account preferences. If you select the setting "Allow anyone to gift me works", you can receive treats. If you do not select this setting, only an assigned author can give you a gift in Yuletide.

Will this be a feature of Yuletide going forward?
Maybe, maybe not. It will depend on how well it works out this year!

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

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