overwhelmed is axel

Please use this post to talk about the RPF or RPF-adjacent fandoms you're interested in nominating, requesting, or offering this year!

RPF nomination categories can be fluid in Yuletide, so we encourage RPF fans to coordinate with each other about the social circles, career groups, and characters you're interested in, to help ensure the resulting categories suit as many people as possible.

Coordinating your RPF nomination with other fans is the best way to make sure we can approve RPF fandoms quickly and easily. You are also welcome to reach out to us directly at yuletideadmin@gmail.com to discuss a potentially sensitive nomination.
This year's eligibility post covers what characters and fandom labels you can nominate. Here is a post from 2023 that explains why we may reject some RPF nominations.

While each RPF fandom must still meet Yuletide rules for size (no more than 1,000 complete works in English), we won’t reject an RPF fandom label for being too broad (i.e., for covering too wide a topic). However, we prefer not to approve two fandoms if one of them is a subset of the other, so please use this post to make sure your nomination doesn't clash with someone else's.

Click for links to some previous tagsets

2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014.

Schedule, Rules, & Collection [still being tweaked for this year] | Contact Mods | Tag Set | Community DW | Community LJ | Discord | Pinch hits on Dreamwidth
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Yuletide 2025 nominations begin on September 15 and end at 9 PM UTC on 26 September. See what can be nominated on the eligibility post. You can brainstorm, coordinate, and promote your fandoms at the participant community on DW.

Some fandoms need evidence to be approved. Comment on this post if:

• The fandom you are nominating has too many stories to be eligible, but only because a tiny pool of authors has written most of it, OR because a significant majority are unrelated but tagged as crossovers, OR because a significant majority tagged as 'English' aren't in English


• The fandom you are nominating appears on AO3 as part of a larger “umbrella” fandom, but you can clearly show that the fics for your fandom are under the limit


• The fandom you are nominating is a fanwork (please include a link to the creator’s permissions statement and also describe how the fanwork is distinct from its source fandom)


• The fandom you are nominating is an original work shared on a fan archive (please include a link to the creator’s permissions statement)


• The fandom you are nominating is a social media post (please check RPF restrictions), headline, meme, or other “ephemeral” canon (please include the URL for the canon)


• The fandom you are nominating includes a Worldbuilding nomination for an RPF or other real-world fandom


• The fandom you are nominating includes the words “All Media Types” or “and Related Fandoms” and you believe you need to use that label


• The fandom you are nominating is closely related to another fandom, especially if the other fandom is ineligible (ex: a Star Wars cartoon or tie-in novel, a prequel to a popular book series, or an audio drama sequel of an ineligible TV show)


• The fandom you are nominating does not yet exist on AO3 and is hard to google (very common name, few sources in English, etc). Note: Most new fandoms do not need evidence.

Mods will not consider the following evidence:

• Use of original characters


• Crossovers


• Fic quality


• Ambiguous endings in stories that are marked 'complete'


• Mistagging, wrong language, or not-many-authors evidence for fandoms that appear to have 1100+ eligible works on AO3. If you believe your fandom should be an exception, talk to the mods directly before commenting with evidence

If your fandom is one of these cases, you must leave evidence this year even if the fandom has been approved in the past. Otherwise, mods may reject the fandom if it’s nominated without evidence.

You must submit evidence before nominations close at 9 PM UTC on 26 September. It may take us some time to review and respond to your post, so if your nomination slots depend on our response, we recommend posting your evidence as early as possible!

Please put the fandom name in the subject line of your comment as well as inside your comment.

Suggested template:
<b>Fandom</b>:
<b>Possible issue with the fandom</b>:
<b>Why this fandom should be considered eligible</b>:
<b>Link to source (ephemeral fandoms, fanworks, and original works on fan archives)</b>:
<b>Link to creator's permissions statement (fanworks and original works on fan archives)</b>:

You are welcome to link to documents containing your evidence, if your post is long.

You can use bookmarklets for checking how many of your fandom’s works on AO3 are in English, complete, and over 1,000 words long, for any rating.

If your fandom appears too big before you use those filters, and is easily under 1,000 works after you apply the filters, then you don't need to tell us about it.

Schedule, Rules, & Collection | Contact Mods | Tag Set | Community DW | Community LJ | Discord | Pinch hits on Dreamwidth
Please either sign in to comment, or include a name with your anonymous comments, including replies to others' comments. Unsigned comments will stay screened.

Yuletide is an annual fic (1000+ words) exchange for rare and obscure fandoms run through this community and through the Archive of Our Own.

Current phase: Prepare to nominate your fandoms! See what fandoms are eligible here. Some types of fandoms need clarifications for us to approve them - please submit evidence here. If you are nominating RPF, you may want to coordinate your nominations here.

2025 Schedule

Monday 15 to Friday 26 September: Nominations (end 9pm UTC 26 September)
Tuesday 14 to Friday 24 October: Sign-ups (end 9pm UTC 24 October)
Sunday 26 October: Assignments out (may be earlier)
Wednesday 10 December: Default deadline (9pm UTC)
Wednesday 17 December: Assignment deadline (9pm UTC)
Wednesday 24 December: Main collection works reveals (9pm UTC)
Thursday 25 December: Madness collection works reveals (9pm UTC)
Thursday 1 January: Author reveals, end of event (9pm UTC)

Schedule, Rules, & Collection [still being tweaked for this year] | Contact Mods | Tag Set | Community DW | Community LJ | Discord | Pinch hits on Dreamwidth