Yuletide nominations

[wendelah1]

Yuletide nominations are open. Is anyone here definitely planning to nominate The Americans? If you are, what characters are you nominating?

I was hoping we could coordinate our efforts.

This probably should have its own post but I was wondering if anyone else would be interested in a single fandom gift exchange, not this calendar year but the next. I was thinking about an exchange modeled along the lines of fringe_exchange, which would be open to writers, artists, podficcers and vidders.

I thought it would be fun to slot it between the first of the year and the beginning of the new season. Alternatively, it could help fill the long hiatus between the end of season three and the start of season four.

Comments

[selenak]

*delurks*

Hello, new(ish) fan joining. I'll definitely nominate The Americans, and I would welcome a coordination so we could get more characters available later for requesting. I plan to nominate Philip, Elizabeth, Claudia and Charles Duluth and would love it if someone else would nominate Paige and Henry, Stan, Arkady, Nina, and Gregory?

[wendelah1]

Hello new(ish) fan, selenak. Thank you for delurking.

If the Yuletide spread sheet is to be believed, other folks have nominated China Beach and Belle and most of the characters I wanted, so that opens up a slot for me to nominate characters for The Americans.

I already told Jae I would nominate Gregory.

I can nominate Paige and Henry and Stan for you, as well.

I would like to see someone nominate Martha Hansen and Sandra Beeman in addition to the other characters you mention. And Oleg! I want Oleg Igorevich Burov. I WANT ALL THE CHARACTERS and ALL THE STORIES.

[selenak]

That would be fabulous. All the characters and all the stories is of course the long term goal. :)

[sistermagpie]

I talked to Jae and said I would nominate Gregory and Lucia.

[wendelah1]

So does that mean you have two open slots?

[sistermagpie]

Yes, I now I'm going to nominate those two but if we coordinate and other people are covering other people (like most obviously Philip and Elizabeth, for instance) I could cover other people.

[selenak]

Martha, Oleg and/or Sandra for wendelah1, then?

[wendelah1]

I can nominate Sandra Beeman since she's nominating Gregory. That still leaves Nina, Oleg, Arkady and Martha Hansen from our two combined lists.

How about if she nominates Nina for you and Oleg for me?

That still leaves Martha and Arkady to hand off to someone else--if anyone else is nominating.

[selenak]

Sorry, am rarely able to go online, hence the belated reply: that would work for me, and in fact, since I see Katiac has nominated Philip and Claudia already, I could edit my nomination and put Martha and Arkady in!

[wendelah1]

That sounds great!

[sistermagpie]

Okay, so just to be clear, I'm going to nominate:

Gregory, Lucia, Nina and Oleg?

[wendelah1]

Sorry to be late getting back to you. Yesterday was crazed.

That...sounds right to me.

I'm nominating Paige and Henry and Stan and Sandra Beeman.

EDIT: Katiac nominated Henry. So--I'll nominate someone else.


Excellent.

[treonb]

Welcome!

I'm not joining in on Yuletide, but let me know if I can help out in any way.

[selenak]

Thank you; you don't have to write a Yuletide story in order to nominate a fandom/characters, though! You just need an AO3 account.

[katiac]

Could someone please post a link to yuletide and idiot-proof instructions for signing up? I tried last year and couldn't figure it out. I have an AO3 account. But I think last year there was that Live Journal thing? Does one need to nominate characters to write? I am fine doing both.

[sistermagpie]

You don't need to nominate characters to write. The whole process seems confusing but when you actually go through it and do it it makes sense. If you have a AO3 account you can nominate characters/fandoms whether or not you wind up joining the exchange. You don't need to have an lj at all--some people use lj for certain things about the exchange but you don't have to have one.

This is the link to where you nominate--there's a button on the side that says nominate to start entering things:
http://archiveofourown.org/tag_sets/479

They have a faq that I think is pretty good here:
http://archiveofourown.org/collections/yuletide2014/profile#faq

One of the things on it covers signing up for a challenge on AO3, Yuletide included:
http://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/40

But if you have any specific questions I (and probably other people too) would be glad to answer them. I've only been doing it a few years so I well remember how confusing it seemed before I went through it.

[katiac]

Thank you. I managed to submit characters this time around (Claudia, Elizabeth's mother, Philip, Henry, if anyone's tracking.) Hopefully this bodes well for me not mucking things up when it's time to sign up. It seems like last year there was some kind of crazy spreadsheet? Or am I having a memory lapse?

[sistermagpie]

There is a spreadsheet but you don't have to ever look at it at all! The spreadsheet is for people to keep track of things they know have been requested so they can look for things they want to offer or write treats for or whatever. It's totally a side thing being done by people participating, though, not something you need to think about. You just have to look at the fandoms list once it's finished and offer/request ones you want!

[wendelah1]

I can try. Nominations happen first. This is the New Tag Set Nomination Post at AO3. Click on nominate. It will bring up the nomination form.

You can nominate three fandoms and up to four characters per fandom. The form is autofill if the fandom already has a tag on AO3. The Americans does, so that will not be a problem. Character names could be dicier since they aren't all on there from the last time. We need to make sure the Russian characters' names are spelled correctly and so on.

If your fandom doesn't have a tag yet, meaning it has no stories on AO3, you type it in manually following the approved formatting. The fandoms list gives an idea of how they like different genres formatted. It looks like they have our fandom like this: The Americans (TV 2013). If you wanted to nominate a movie: Anastasia (1997). Or a book: Animal Farm - George Orwell. If it's song they just want the title and the word song in parentheses: And You Give (Song). It all seems a bit arbitrary to me, but it's their game so we play by their rules.

Yuletide FAQ
Rules

There is a link to an older tutorial for how to nominate using the form.

Signups are not open yet. First the nominations are made, then the mods approve the fandoms, then comes the sign up.

To sign up, you have to be able to offer a minimum of four fandoms, one more than you are allowed to nominate. This so that people can't just nominate three tiny, one-person fandoms and offer the same three things they've asked for. If you offer four fandoms, there is a better chance of getting matched as a writer. People whose requests don't get matched aren't a problem--they go on the pinch hitters list and those usually get snapped up within a short time.

You can ask for three to six fandoms, zero to four characters.

If you follow yuletide_admin, you will get announcements and links to the signup when it's open. If you want to sign up, you might want to browse the Yuletide archive to get a sense of what a Yuletide fandom is and then go ahead and nominate what you want and/or what you want to write!

I would read over the entire FAQ and the rules, too. I plan to, since they've been revised.

[katiac]

Thank you. I was able to submit characters. This is an improvement over last year.

[wendelah1]

Besides The Americans, what else did you nominate?

[katiac]

Just The Americans. Do I need to nominate other shows, or for that matter, is it required to request a story once we get to that stage (and from multiple fandoms), or can I just volunteer to write? I could easily request an Americans story, but I'm always a little nervous about not being familiar with other fandoms that are small enough to qualify.

(Thanks for all your help, btw!)

[sistermagpie]

You can nominate up to 3 shows--but you don't have to.

When it comes time to sign up you have to request a story (actually you request 3 or 4 so that a person can be matched to you to write one) and you offer to write four different fandoms.

If you just want to write you can just get on the pinch hitter list, which means that you'll get notified of requests where the writer dropped out. But those get snatched up quickly and they wouldn't necessarily be for The Americans. Your third option would just be to look at any requests people posted that were for The Americans (if they do a Yuletide letter they'll post a most detailed description of their request, often in their lj) and write it as a treat for them. So you're not really doing the exchange, but you're writing a gift story for somebody who wants it.

Does that make sense?

Your last line is why they have the nomination process--it's so people can nominate at least 3 fandoms they want or think they can write for if someone requests it.

[katiac]

Okay, maybe I will look at the list once it is posted and if I am familiar enough with at least 3-4 fandoms, I will go all in, and if I am not, I will just write treats. I hope I will be familiar enough with a few shows to really get in the mix. Is there a way to know which requests have already been matched before you write treats? Or is it just random and you might accidentally write the same prompt as someone else?

[sistermagpie]

You wouldn't know if someone had been matched on that story before you wrote a treat--sometimes people do wind up writing the same prompt as someone else. Once I was sure I was doing that, but it turned out the person had been matched on something completely different.

When sign-ups open they'll be a whole list of available fandoms that you can choose from, so you sound like you have the right idea looking for ones you can offer. Some of them are even for commercials or songs so you can check them out quickly.

What you can also see as people start signing up is which things have been requested and offered. (Though it doesn't show up on the list until at least one person has requested it.) I think last year, looking at that list, I figured out there was something like 5 requests I might have been matched with or something. And I always wind up being assigned to the one I never thought I'd match on somehow!

[wendelah1]

What sistermagpie said.

There is no requirement to sign up in order to write a story. Once signups start, you can check the letters list. If someone's prompt strikes a chord, you can write them a treat. Even once Yuletide is over, all of the requests/prompts can be written and posted to the New Year's collection up until the nomination process begins for next Yuletide.

Last year I wrote my assigned story, and two treats. By sheer coincidence, I also got three gifts.