Posting; Pinch Hit; Betas

Dec. 14th, 2025 11:09 am
yuletidemods: A hippo lounges with laptop in hand, peering at the screen through a pair of pince-nez and smiling. A text bubble with a heart emerges from the screen. The hippo dangles a computer mouse from one toe. By Oro. (Default)
[personal profile] yuletidemods posting in [community profile] yuletide_admin
The DEADLINE is getting closer and closer!


At deadline time - 9pm UTC on 17 December - your Yuletide assignment must be posted (published, not a draft!) to the Yuletide collection as a complete work.


Before then, we need your help, Yuletide! We have an outstanding pinch hit (#121) for the fandoms:
SMPLive
Roughhouse SMP
Mirai SMP - XYouly
Highcraft (Web Series)

See details here. Please email us at yuletideadmin@gmail.com if you can help, and spread the word if you have friends who might be interested. This pinch hit is due at 9pm UTC on 19 December.

More pinch hits will be advertised at [community profile] yuletide_pinch_hits, especially after 9pm UTC on the 17th.


Additionally, we love beta reader volunteers! You can connect with writers at this post by filling out a Google form, or you can join the Discord and keep an eye out for beta requests advertised by members with the Hippo role.


Good luck to everyone facing down the deadline!


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.

juushika: Photograph of a black cat named October, peering out of a white fleece cave (October)
[personal profile] juushika
Title: Hangsaman
Author: Shirley Jackson
Narrator: Julia Whelan
Published: Books on Tape, 2021 (1951)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 210
Total Page Count: 552,500
Text Number: 2071
Read Because: fan of the author; audiobook borrowed from Multnomah County Library
Review: The indicative slimness of a blurb: a 17-year-old girl in the 1950s leaves the claustrophobic domesticity of her family for her first year at an all-girls' college. But much of the novel happens in the protagonist's involved imagination or in the space between scenes. If this were anyone but Jackson, I wouldn't've had the patience for the excruciating minutiae of the first third; but it is Jackson, so the humiliating social anxieties are as beautifully figured as they are tedious. But the glimpses between, marginal and implied, disjointed and imagined and super gay, overshadow the text as it progresses, culminating in a remarkable final third. This isn't my new favorite Jackson, but that's hardly a fair critique; it really landed for me, and I can imagine a successful reread in a few years.
juushika: Photograph of a black cat named August, laying down, looking to the side, framed by sunlight (August)
[personal profile] juushika
Title: We Were Witches
Author: Ariel Gore
Published: Amethyst Editions, 2017; Blackstone Audio, 2018
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 290
Total Page Count: 552,290
Text Number: 2070
Read Because: apparently this has been on my TBR since this 2018 Lesbrary review; audiobook and ebook borrowed from Multnomah County Library
Review: The author's story of her college years as a young single mother. This is fragmented autofiction, cut through with magical realism and retellings; I enjoy the willingness to manipulate the structure to create connections and juxtapositions. But the "just the good bits" approach renders simplified and repetitive the feminist themes, to their detriment; it feels exaggerated for dramatic effect even though it's probably not, and I never quite found my foothold in it.

I started this on audio and finished it on ebook, and recommend the latter over the former; the short sections and atypical formatting come across better in text.
yuletidemods: A hippo lounges with laptop in hand, peering at the screen through a pair of pince-nez and smiling. A text bubble with a heart emerges from the screen. The hippo dangles a computer mouse from one toe. By Oro. (Default)
[personal profile] yuletidemods posting in [community profile] yuletide_admin
The default deadline has passed! Defaults after this date will require a New Year’s Resolution fic before you can sign up again. See more info about defaulting at our FAQ.

Original assignments and pinch hits #1-96 are due in a little over 6 days, at:

9pm UTC, 17 December
See when that is in YOUR timezone
See countdown

This is an international exchange, and deadlines are given in UTC/GMT. This deadline is also at a DIFFERENT TIME OF DAY to deadlines we've used in recent years. Please click the links and check when the deadline is for you. We appreciate it!


Good luck to all writing, and especial thanks to everyone tackling pinch hits! Check out [community profile] yuletide_pinch_hits for requests currently in need of writers.


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.

2025 Away from Keyboard post

Dec. 10th, 2025 09:27 pm
morbane: three exclamation marks, one of which is formed out of two guinea pigs (guinea pig)
[personal profile] morbane posting in [community profile] yuletide
Yuletide is coming! If everything goes well, we will reveal works in the main collection at 9pm UTC on 24 December, two weeks from now. Madness works are revealed a day later.

(Default deadline is 9pm UTC on the 10th; posting deadline is 9pm UTC on the 17th.)

In Yuletide, it's important to leave a comment on your gift (or gifts) to thank your author.

If you think you'll be delayed in commenting until late in the anonymous period (ending 1 January) or maybe not even until well into the new year, you can use this post to OPTIONALLY let your author(s) know about that delay ahead of time. You don't need to give a reason, but an approximate time indication may be helpful. Please include your AO3 name.

Thanks everyone! Good luck with writing, and please consider the beta post or [community profile] yuletide_pinch_hits if you have capacity for beta jobs or pinch hits!

(no subject)

Dec. 4th, 2025 04:23 pm
lotesse: (Default)
[personal profile] lotesse
Reading Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's The Wizard of the Crow; absolutely wild parallels to current events here, on the daily. Despotism as the ultimate theater of the absurd: all of these petty men running around to shiv each other and cover their own asses, twisting language and logic and meaning up in absolute knots because what are words but a means to power?
juushika: A black and white photo of an ink pen (Writing)
[personal profile] juushika
Title: Flesh Cartel
Author: Rachel Haimowitz, Heidi Belleau
Published: 2012-2014
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 1340 (75+75+76+75+75+93+68+68+68+94+70+101+74+68+75+58+58+56+56)
Total Page Count: 552,000
Text Number: 2051-2069
Read Because: searched for erotic horror at the library and, you know, yeah, this counts!, borrowed from Multnomah County Library
Review: Two brothers, one strong guy and one pretty boy, are kidnapped by the titular flesh cartel to be sold into sexual slavery. I unironically love that people are just publishing and my library is just licensing stuff that back-in-my-day would have been serial publications on LiveJournal. Short version: if you think you'd like this, it's pretty good; more psychologically astute, especially in the middle sections, than I was expecting, with uneven but incredibly consumable pacing that flags in the long resolution.

Long version, cut for content more than spoilers: Read more... )

Oncoming default deadline

Dec. 3rd, 2025 03:01 pm
yuletidemods: A hippo lounges with laptop in hand, peering at the screen through a pair of pince-nez and smiling. A text bubble with a heart emerges from the screen. The hippo dangles a computer mouse from one toe. By Oro. (Default)
[personal profile] yuletidemods posting in [community profile] yuletide_admin

Default deadline

The deadline for a simple default on Yuletide is 9pm UTC on 10 December - just under one week from now. Please check the link - this isn't the same time of day as recent years.

The default deadline is the cut-off point for defaulting on your Yuletide assignment without a penalty. This applies if it's your first Yuletide, or if you posted successfully last time you signed up or took a pinch hit. Default before this time, and you're free to sign up again in future. If you're not sure whether the default deadline applies to you, please talk to mods (yuletideadmin@gmail.com).

Sample reasons to default:
  • You want to

  • You can't reconcile the canon, your writing strengths, and your recipient's DNWs

  • Life got in the way

  • A new installment of canon ruined your ideas

  • You use generative AI such as ChatGPT, and you just saw the rule that that's not allowed in this event

  • You can't see how to get the characters to do what you want them to do

  • You want to


People default every year for a variety of reasons. We don't need to know why, and we wish you well. When we open sign-ups, we recommend that you don't sign up unless you're confident you can write a story by the deadline. But after you've signed up, things may happen, and it's okay to withdraw, if that's what makes sense for you. See full information about defaulting at the FAQ.

To default, go to your assignment at the collection, and press the default button.

Assignment deadline

All original assignments, and all pinch hits sent out prior to the default deadline, are due at 9pm UTC 17 December (which is a DIFFERENT time of day to last year). Countdown

Pinch Hits

We have an outstanding pinch hit at [community profile] yuletide_pinch_hits. Please get in contact if you can help!!!

Betas & Beta Help Needed

We warmly welcome beta reader volunteers at the beta post and on Discord. See the FAQ for more information about finding betas if you need one!

Note: on the Yuletide Discord, requests for betas, or for brainstorming help that might give away what you're writing, are handled by DM-ing someone who currently holds a Hippo role. Please read the server FAQ before seeking a beta. Give your Hippo the relevant details and make sure you can receive messages back.

Treats and Posting

Click here for instructions on posting your assignment or treats. If you've finished your assignment and are considering treats, check out the app, and don't forget the promo post where people have advertised their canons. You may find something amazing there! Check out the prompts from pinch hitters too.

Keep Yuletide Madness in mind. The Madness collection is for stories under 1,000 words and stories which do not exactly fit the fandoms and characters requested. These works must still be gifts for other participants.

AFK post

We will also put up an Away from Keyboard post shortly on the [community profile] yuletide comm. The purpose of this post is that if people know they won't be able to respond to their gift until late in the anon period, or even until the new year, they can let their author know ahead of time. (Not being able to read and respond until several days after the collection opens is normal, though - many people will have family and other obligations!)

Happy December!


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.

juushika: Photo of a cat in motion, blurred in such a way that it looks like a monster (Cryptid cat)
[personal profile] juushika
Title: The Church of the Mountain of Flesh
Author: Kyle Wakefield
Published: 2024
Rating: 4.5 of 5
Page Count: 445
Total Page Count: 550,660
Text Number: 2050
Read Because: searched for erotic horror at the library and, you know, yeah, this counts!, borrowed from Multnomah County Library and isn't it cool that they have some self-pub stuff these days
Review: God makes a deal with our grieving protagonist: if he rebuilds the church he destroyed, God will give him the body of a man. I almost DNF'd this in the opening chapters: the bombast of the speculative and the all-but-inevitable emphasis on visual descriptions in cosmic/body horror is A Lot & didn't really work for me. But once this gets claws in the ground, it gains momentum and readability. I have my criticisms (overlong and sometimes talky; I'm not totally sold on the success of the dual timelines; the dogged unlikability of the entire cast is a distinctive and occasionally obnoxious approach to characterization), but they're easily outweighed by what works not just well but exceptionally.

The trans stuff is generally where things get talky, but the holiness of the self, the disruptive and destructive and creative selfishness of selfhood, is a triumph of theme & genre. Even better for me, the central romance is exactly my thing, and here the excess becomes delight rather than detriment: when I reread, it will be to reach those scenes in the tent and church basement, to the climax of a love that glories in abjection. When the speculative works like this, making large and literal the reshaping of the self or the desire to tear into the heart of a loved one, it easily justifies the self-published first novel self-indulgences.

(no subject)

Dec. 2nd, 2025 09:11 am
lotesse: (Default)
[personal profile] lotesse
ngl it's been fun that the snow set in hard this year as soon as December was on the horizon
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