Tis the Season for Yuletide!

When I started this blog, I intended to have more posts about media fandoms on the Internet, because I'm a member of several of them. However, I've had concerns about treading on other people's privacy, and it was hard to talk about specific activities or groups without potentially outing fans who were participating anonymously. I also seek to avoid drama whenever possible, and fandom can be extremely sensitive to any excessive metatextual poking. Consequently, my fandom posts have been few and fairly restrained.

But 'tis the season for the yearly pan-fandom fanfiction gift exchange known as Yuletide, and I feel compelled to share my excitement. I've participated every year for the past five years or so, and I've really enjoyed my experience with it. Yuletide was conceived to bring a little love to the fans of books and games and movies and TV shows that have very small fandoms or none at all, in the form of new fanfiction stories. After some preliminary hashing out of which fandoms are eligible for a new round, participants sign up with a list of prompts they'd like stories written to, along with a list of fandoms that they're willing to write for. The lists are matched up anonymously, assignments are E-mailed out, and there's a month or so of furious media consumption and writing before the stories come due for Christmas. Writers are kept anonymous, and revealed a week after the stories are posted.

The result is literally thousands of new fanfiction stories every year. The requirements for participation aren't that difficult to meet - being able to write a story with a minimum wordcount for a deadline - but they're difficult enough that the stories produced for Yuletide tend to be of much higher average quality than the ones that come out of the usual no-holds-barred culture of Internet fanfiction. And because all the fandoms are obscure ones with no fan community around them, there's less of the in-jokes and insularity that tend to hamper accessibility. Among my favorite stories from last year were "Killing Elvis," a story about xenomorph taxidermy set in the "Alien" universe, and one titled "Wait, Wait, Don't Eat Me," that actually received a little attention from its inspiration. Yes, that's right. NPR Real-Person zombie apocalypse fanfiction.

Yuletide is not without its flaws and quirks. There are several of barriers to participation that might be daunting to those who would like to join in the fun. The event is hosted on Archive of Our Own, a fan-run fanfiction archive that is for the moment, invite only. Yuletide also came out of the corner of media fandom that centers around the Livejournal blogging service, and most of the announcements and updates are made through various Livejournal blogs. It's not a challenge to do Yuletide without a blog, but it is harder to join in on discussions and enjoy the communal experience. Also, the participants skew heavily female, and Yuletide has taken pains to be friendly to the female-dominated tradition of slash fanfiction, which may spook more conservative fans. In other words, heteronornativity is never assumed in Yuletide stories where they might be elsewhere. I mean, Obi Wan Kenobi never says he's not bisexual, does he?

And of course, there's the drama. Drama over obscure fandom eligibility. Drama over signup forms. Prompt assignments. Writing. Uploads to the fanfiction archive. Commenting. Moderation. People who did not read the rules. People who feel shortchanged in some fashion stirring up controversy. Is the anonymity optional? Is it too late to declare failure and ask for a pinch-hitter? Why has the archive site crashed again? In the last few days before stories come due, I swear every fanfiction writer I know has a meltdown over their works-in-progress. It's not Christmas without the yearly Yuletide panic. I'm one of those annoying types who usually finishes early, and just sits back and enjoys the maelstrom. For others, though, the pressure can be too much to deal with during the busy holiday season.

I've significantly decreased my participation in many fan activities since starting this blog, including several of the other writing challenges and events. Yuletide is special, though. It doesn't require me to be part of any particular fandom, I don't have to keep up with any cliques or communities to really be involved, and you never know what you're going to get every year. It think that's why it's gotten bigger and bigger even as trends in the media keep shifting and changing. There were only a few hundred participants when I first started, and I last year they were nearly two thousand.

I don't plan to stop anytime soon. It's always nice to be able to make somebody happy by writing up the further adventures of characters who don't get enough love from the fannish masses. And getting a story written especially for you in exchange is always nice too.