Yuletide Tag Set is live!

[rachelmanija]

Behold the glory of the Yuletide tag set!

Diana Wynne Jones has swept the author category, with ten separate nominations for her works: Archer's Goon, Eight Days of Luke, Fire and Hemlock, Hexwood,, and the Chrestomanci, Dalemark, Derkholm, Howl, and Magids series, plus the short story "Nad and Dan and Quaffy."

Agatha Christie also makes a good showing with nominations for Poirot, Miss Marple, Tommy and Tuppence, and And Then There Were None.

At least two non-speaking, non-superintelligent, non-magical dog characters have been nominated, Towser from Biggles and Popchyk from Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch. I really hope we get at least one story each starring them. Or possibly a crossover in which they team up.

In the blast from the past book nominations, I see Cat in the Mirror by Mary Stolz (okay, that was me), Cynthia Voigt's Tillerman Chronicles and The Callender Papers, The Chalet School, Macdonald Hall by Gordon Korman, the Baby-Sitters Club, and Baby Island by Carol Ryrie Brink, which I have not read but I gather is about girls stranded on a desert island with lots of well-behaved babies.

In the movies category, I was particularly pleased to see nominations for RRR, Red Eye, and Repo Man.

The reliably fun Other Media section includes a nomination for Caitlin Dougherty in her Ask a Mortician YouTube - really curious about that one - the Museum of Jurassic Technology, and various stitches in Bookbinding Techniques.

What looks tempting or intriguing in the tag set? What do you hope gets written? What works had you never heard of before they appeared in the tag set but you now plan to check out?

Comments

[black_bentley]

I am an amateur bookbinder, and I'm entirely baffled by the existence of the Bookbinding Techniques tags...

I am definitely hoping for some Towser fic, and there are a few things on my TBR that I might now have to bump up in advance of Yuletide /o\

[lirazel]

People who write anthropomorfic are definitely a different kind of fic-reader than I am, but I am glad they're having fun!

[lirazel]

I'm going to try to read A Study in Drowning and The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi before sign-ups to see if I want to write for them. Also going to try to watch Why Didn't They Ask Evans?

I was shocked that The Queen's Thief is still eligible, but I guess after you filter out fics that are less than 1,000 words or WIPs, we're still somehow under 1,000 fics for that one.

[swan_tower]

Ahhhh somebody nominated Filibus! Genderqueer master thief silent films for the win!

[naomikritzer]

Things that caught my eye: Stephen King is one of the nominated characters in the Princess Bride tags. Fandoms that caught my eye include Margery Kempe, Emily of New Moon, A Half-Built Garden, Harriet the Spy, Hench, and Ink Blood Sister Scribe (which I'm currently reading -- I know the author). Also! ALSO! The Sweet Pickles books. Does anyone else remember those? These are picture books about a bunch of quirky animal characters -- the one that the most people read was probably Me-Too Iguana ("Me too me too *I* want feathers *too!*" and she runs home and cuts open a pillow and glues feathers to herself. She finally stops doing this after all her friends teach her to love herself the way she is by dressing up as iguanas.)

I re-discovered the Sweet Pickles books (which came out in the 70s or early 80s) when my kids were little and I found a big stack at a garage sale. They hold up pretty well. I'm a little hesitant to offer the fandom just because I'm not sure I remember them well enough and I think we got rid of them when the kids outgrew them. (The nominated characters are Clever Camel, Fearless Fish, Nasty Nightingale, and Questioning Quail. I remember Clever Camel pretty well (she's the "oh, found the lesbian!" character, lol) and I sort of remember Nasty Nightingale (she threw a tantrum in one of the books we had). I don't remember Fearless Fish or Questioning Quail as well and I don't think I had their books.

[vaznetti]

Brat Farrar, by Josephine Tey! I am very fond of that book. And, for something different, I'm very interested in the Classical Rhetorical Exercises nominations.

Going through the tagset is probably my favorite part of Yuletide.

[ethelmay]

I have been fanfic-adjacent for a decade or so, and I still am not 100% clear on exactly how Yuletide works. Is there an explanation for newbies somewhere? (I don't want to participate especially, but I would like to understand what's going on a bit better.)

[rachelmanija]

It's a fanfic Secret Santa exchange for very rare fandoms. The tag set lists everything that's eligible to be requested. You request a story set in one of your choice of 3-4 fandoms from the tag set, and you offer to write a story set in your choice of up to 10 fandoms from the tag set.

An algorithm matches you with a person you will write for (your recipient) and you write a story for them, which you post to the AO3 archive. They don't know who's writing for them. You have also been matched with a mystery writer, who will write a story for you. On December 25, all the stories appear in the archive with no author names attached. Everyone enjoys reading and reccing them. On Jan 1, the author names appear.

Does that make sense?

[ethelmay]

Yes, thank you very much!

[sheliak]

Some things I'm intrigued by: Claymore, Otoyomegatari, Star Trek: Rihannsu - Diane Duane, The Squire's Tales Series - Gerald Morris, Tir Tanagiri - Jo Walton, Classical Rhetorical Exercises...

[rydra_wong]

Obviously, I am deeply happy to see that Prophet made it in, not least because it means like someone other than me and kore is fannish about this book.

Other things jumping out at me:

Books: The City and the City! Detransition, Baby! The Worst Journey In The World!

Video games: A Dark Room! Inscryption! Transistor! Someone's been sneaky and got Slay The Princess in ahead of its release date (the 20th)!

Movies: Design for Living (1933)!

[zdenka]

I am pleased about all the operas (including The Magic Flute, Un Ballo in Maschera, and Don Carlos, among others) and intrigued by the Lyke-Wake Dirge.

[larryhammer]

I am also intrigued by the Lyke-Wake Dirge. (ObDisclosure: I nominated it.)

[zdenka]

Cool! I'll look forward to seeing your requests.

[cahn]

Oh cool!! I actually first came across this in Stravinsky's version. (The link only has the first verse, but the same person appears to have uploaded the whole thing.)

[larryhammer]

I hadn't known Stravinsky had set this! Neat.

[cahn]

Wait, you didn't nominate Magic Flute? I was sure that had to have been you! You were Arabella, though, right? (Also happy to see that!)

I'm 80% sure I'm requesting Turandot! (Only 80% because there's so much cool stuff in the tagset, yay!)

[carbonel]

I was very fond of Baby Island back when, though it's been decades since I last read it.

Most of the babies, thankfully, are more in the toddler age group. But that does mean that they're self-mobile...

[cahn]

There's so much cool stuff in the tagset! I feel like I'm more excited about this set than I've been in the last couple of years. Maybe because there's 4/3 the usual amount :)

-Aspects (John M. Ford) -- I'm not going to request this, but gosh that would be neat if someone wrote this
-The People (Zenna Henderson) -- YAY! will definitely request!
-Dialogues des Carmélites -- I'm going to have to rewatch this one
-Mabinogion -- interested to see these requests!
-Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Bede) -- very curious about what the nominator has in mind!
-A Tangled Web (L.M. Montgomery) -- one of my favorites and it never gets nominated!
-The Marlows (Forest) -- I was just rereading these, they're so good
-Prose Edda -- though I'm a little suspicious given that Odin, Thor, and Loki are the nominated characters
-Wulf and Eadwacer
-Hadrian -- modern opera which I also have to watch
-A whole lot of very interesting-looking historical RPF!

[cesy]

Apparently Bede throws in lots of funny asides about people calculating the date of Easter incorrectly, according to my dad who happens to be reading it right now.

[rydra_wong]

Apologies if you know this already, but this was a hot political topic! The Roman Church and the Irish monks on Iona calculated it differently, and missionaries from both had been involved in converting bits of England to Christianity, so when you celebrated Easter was kind of a marker for a missionary turf war:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synod_of_Whitby

[cesy]

Fascinating, thank you!

[machiavellijr]

Lots of shiny things. It feels very weird to see the 1992 Good Omens script in there, as I distinctly remember finding a copy on the Web in about 2006 and my Gaiman-loving friend being utterly convinced it was fake. If I had a copy to hand I might consider offering it, but I don't sadly.

Also: Much Kipling, hurrah!
Sredni Vashtar, my heart runneth over
All the Python!
There is an awful lot of classical RPF. Hopefully that means someone will write some.
Oh God Aspects is on there. John M. Ford rides again. Must not get my hopes up, must not get my hopes up. I kind of want to offer it but I couldn't pull off Ford in a million years.

[larryhammer]

Among the more interesting poem fandoms (at least, of those I didn't nominate) include Hey Diddle Diddle, the nursery rhyme (characters: The Dish, The Spoon, Worldbuilding), and The Handsome Cabin Boy.

I'm intrigued that Béroul's version of the Tristan and Iseut story was nom'd, and am wondering what the nominator is thinking of.