Dark Agenda

Authors have been revealed and yuletide has opened an AO3 collection for New Year's Resolution 2011, thus, marking the end of the main yuletide challenge.

Last year, dark_agenda was started as a collective effort to promote representation for chromatic sources and characters in yuletide. This year, with your continued help and support, we extended our effort and sought to provide more resources. Among them included the lists of Chromatic Yuletide 2010 Fandoms & Characters (html version), Chromatic Yuletide Fandom Promotion Posts, Source-Sharing Resources, Chromatic Yuletide Beta Offers, Chromatic Yuletide 2010 Prompts (html version), Critiques & Common Pitfalls and Chromatic Yuletide 2010 Stories & Resources. We amassed:

• ~1000 fandom meta tags for the Chromatic Yuletide 2010 Fandoms & Characters list
  
• ~700 requests for the Chromatic Yuletide 2010 Prompts list
  
• ~500 stories for the Chromatic Yuletide 2010 Stories & Resources list

And our challenge AO3 collection received ~260 submissions!

Thank you for all the participants, beta volunteers, readers, wranglers and passersby who contributed to and supported Chromatic Yuletide 2010 Challenge -- we can not truly thank you all enough!

Of course, our AO3 collection will remain open for New Year's Resolution 2011 submissions and we will continue to collect more fandom meta tags, requests and stories. (For New Year's Resolution 2011, we would love more help in adding requests from Yuletide Complete List of 2010 Prompts to our prompts spreadsheet -- you can use this form or add prompts directly into the spreadsheet, thank you!)

We realized that despite these awesome numbers and achievements there's still much we can to do to increase visibility of chromatic sources and characters. Stories from chromatic sources and/or featuring chromatic characters still only comprised less than 20% of yuletide output and the percentages for stories from African, First Nation, Latin American and South/Southeast/West Asian sources are even depressingly lower (some even non-existent).

With that in mind, how has your experience with Chromatic Yuletide been so far? We'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback! If you participated in Chromatic Yuletide 2010 Challenge:

• To which challenge components did you commit yourself and how did it go?
  
• Did you have specific goals in mind while writing your story? What were they?
  
• Do you have any tips and tricks for writing chromatic sources or characters you'd like to share?
  
• How were dark_agenda helpful for you in achieving your goals? And what do you think dark_agenda could do to be more helpful?
  
• How effective were the promo posts? Were there some formats that worked better than others?
  
• Was the information provided on the beta list sufficient? Are there other categories that we should include for next year?

As readers:

• What were your expectations for the Chromatic Yuletide 2010 Challenge? And did the challenge meet them?
  
• For yuletide stories in general this year, what were some portrayals of chromatic sources and characters that work for you? What didn't? How do you think those latter portrayals could be better?
  
• What do you wish to see next year with regards to chromatic source and character representation?

We've mentioned in the previous post that we'll be compiling a master list of all the yuletide stories from chromatic sources or that feature chromatic characters, including those that may not have been specifically written for Chromatic Yuletide 2010 as well or posted to the AO3 Collection. We're still collecting links, but we've finished wrangling all the revealed stories in the Chromatic Yuletide AO3 Collection so here there are!

As we've said, the list is by no means final so we welcome any corrections and/or additions. Please feel free to also add your own links and/or recs for the story listed (or not yet listed) here!

Happy reading, doers of darkness -- and keep on filling those chromatic Yuletide Madness prompts!

Status Update (Jan. 03, 18:34:37 UTC): Not done! We've wrangled though almost all Yuletide 2010, Yuletide Madness 2010 and New Year's Resolution 2011 posted to Chromatic Yuletide 2010 AO3 Collection and/or tagged with "Dark Agenda", "Chromatic Yuletide", "Chromatic Source", "Chromatic Character", "Character of Color" or variations of. But if we've missed any stories, let us know!

List of Chromatic Yuletide Stories & Resources

( Thematic and rec lists featuring chromatic Yuletide stories )

( Stories featuring chromatic characters from chromatic sources )

( Stories featuring chromatic characters from white/Western/other or multi sources )

( Stories featuring white/Western/other characters, but from chromatic sources )

Last Updated: Jan. 31, 01:19:41 UTC.

The complete list of Yuletide 2010 prompts is now available!

As you browse through the list, if you see any interesting prompts that qualify for our challenge that are not already in our Chromatic Yuletide 2010 Prompts spreadsheet, please feel free to use this form to add it.

The Yuletide mods have announced that Yuletide Madness will close on December 26, 12 PM EST, which gives us more time to write that intriguing prompt for our favorite chromatic fandoms.

yuletide assignments are due 11:59 pm Monday, December 20th North America EST. That's less than 26 hours away! Good luck to those of you who are finishing your assignments!

And, doers of darkness, remember to:

• Also post your story to Chromatic Yuletide 2010 AO3 Collection if it fits the challenge and tag it "Chromatic Source" and/or "Chromatic Character" as well as any numbers of tags you think are applicable


• If you're contemplating Yuletide Madness, check the Chromatic Yuletide 2010 Prompts spreadsheet (html version); there's a guide for how to sort and filter that information


• We're looking for critique posts for white/Western/other sources on the topic of race, ethnicity and culture so if you have any links to contribute, please send them our way!


• If you're waiting for yuletide to go live, might we suggest checking out the list of Chromatic Yuletart artworks? There's currently ~12 artworks featuring chromatic characters and ~2 artworks featuring white/Western/other characters, but from sources by chromatic creators.

In conclusion: ZOMBIE BEARS!

There are less than 8 days (!!!) before yuletide assignments are due. We hope you're making good progress on your assignment and wish you luck. For those who are already done (!!!!!), congratulations!

In the meantime, there are a few things we want to address. One of the components of our Chromatic Yuletide 2010 Challenge is:

[...] if you end up writing problematic source, engage in fixing it: finding the invisible people of colour and putting them back in, writing the back story for a character without tying it into the white people's narratives, critiquing by making explicit the blind spots and bigotry and flaws in the celebrated white heroes of the narrative.

We encourage you to be aware of how the source for which you're writing in particular portrays race, ethnicity, culture and the intersectionality of these issues with others, especially when the source is not created by people from the identity it portrays.

Last year, we posted about some common pitfalls while writing outside your own culture and how to attempt to avoid them, where we also highlighted a discussion about white and Western consumption of manga and anime, and collected critique posts of some white/Western/other sources.

This year, we'd like to offer similar resources. We're trying to collect a central list of critique posts on the topics of race, ethnicity and culture for white/Western/other sources so if you know of any links, we would love to be linked to them!

( List of Critique Posts for White/Western/Other Sources )

We'd also like to discuss some common pitfalls in writing chromatic characters and non-Western cultures. What problems have you encountered as a writer and/or a reader? And how do you think they can be countered against?

Here are some questions that might help you ground your writing for this challenge:

• ( Who is your audience? )


• ( From what cultural contexts are you working? )

What other questions should we ask themselves? And what other posts or articles have helped you clarify your writing process?

Last Updated: 14 Dec. 2010.

In less than 4 days, sign-ups for yuletide will close. We would like to take this opportunity to link and remind you again:

• If you're confused by the sign-up process, yuletide provided some screencasts walking you through the process and the lovely lilacsigil, dzurlady and foreverdirt transcribed the screencasts in the post's comments: Screencasts for signup! For ease, we've compiled all the comments in one full transcript here.


• On that note, if you're planning to sign-up for yuletide, to pinch hit, or to write a stocking suffers or treats for Yuletide Madness, you'll need an AO3 account. You can request an invite at AO3's Invite Requests page or we have 25 invites we can send if you need one!


• If you're still contemplating for which fandom you'll be requesting and offering, scan through our Chromatic Yuletide 2010 Fandoms & Characters (thank you everyone for your help looking up Yuletide eligibility!), Chromatic Yuletide Fandom Promotion Posts, Chromatic Yuletide 2010 Prompts (thank you, troisroyaumes, for your help!) and 2009 Chromatic Unfulfilled Prompts lists for inspirations and ideas.


• When you're signing up, take a look at our Chromatic Yuletide 2010 Resources Post for some tips and remember to copy your requests over to our Chromatic Yuletide 2010 Prompts form or spreadsheet if they fit our challenge!


• And while you're waiting for your assignment, find or offer your beta services!

If you can offer your beta skills for a particular fandom, or culture, ethnicity, language, religion or other identity, please comment here! We will be making a list of all the offers so that people have an easy way to find the help they need.

If you have specific needs, feel free also to post here requesting a beta; anonymous comments will be unscreened, and can be replied to by a beta letting you know how to contact them. To maintain challenge anonymity, we are also happy to act as go-between if you have exhausted all other resources; just email us at darkadmn AT gmail DOT com.

DO REMEMBER: No beta is a magical minority fairy! They are not the One True Arbitrator for their People, and cannot be held responsible for other people finding fault with your story. Also, it is best to have done your own research and leg-work before asking your beta for help.

Also check out the Official beta post over on yuletide, which also has detailed instructions for how to go into yuletide chat and wrangle a hippo for beta help.

If you think you are going to write a last minute treat or extra story in a fandom, do try to plan for a beta in advance, because we cannot promise to be able to find you a last minute beta!

( List of Chromatic Yuletide Beta Offers )

Last Updated: 21 Dec. 2010.

Hello doers of darkness! First of all, thank you so much for all of your help on the nominations spreadsheet. dharmavati, eruthros, and thingswithwings, you all continue to be amazing, and livrelibre, thank you for jumping in as well! In addition to our spreadsheet wranglers, we would also like to thank monanotlisa and plazmah for making us our lovely dark_agenda and Chromatic Yuletide icons.

Secondly, a signal-boost while we wait for the Yuletide 2010 fandoms list: access_fandom has compiled a list of disabled characters in nominated Yuletide fandoms! As you all know, dark_agenda's mission is to promote the representation of chromatic characters in fanworks, but we would love to support more frequent and positive representation of other mis- and underrepresented groups, and to talk about intersectionality while we are at it. Thus, we urge you to revisit the list of disabled chromatic characters that we created for the Festibility challenge, and to let us know if there are any that we can add to it. You may also have noticed that we have an Intersectionality column in our spreadsheet, where chromatic characters who are disabled and/or identify as LGBTQI, Jewish, Muslim, etc. can be highlighted.

Lastly, if you're looking for a source for dark_agenda purposes, we have a post locked to the community that may be helpful.

Hello doers of darkness!

This is a friendly reminder that Yuletide nominations will be closing Wednesday, 20th October at 8:59 pm US Eastern time (which is approximately 29 hours from the time of this post). Once again, the relevant links are below:

How to nominate
Nomination form

For those of you who are still deliberating and/or have nomination slots to spare, please consider checking out the comments at our Chromatic Yuletide 2010 Nominations post! There are people offering fandom suggestions who do not plan to participate in Yuletide and are not planning to nominate themselves. In addition, our Masterlist of Chromatic Yuletide Fandom Promotion Posts is being updated, so you may want to have a look there as well.

If you have nominated one or more fandoms that qualify for our challenge, please list them here! If you would like to brainstorm, urge other people to nominate something you might not have had a slot for, or discuss other aspects of nominations, this is the space to do it.

Do remember that the closer we get to 25th December 2010, the harder it will be for people to learn a new source canon - so this is the best time to try to woo a potential writer over into a TV series or epic 6 volume book canon.

How to Nominate
The nomination form

Nominations close Wednesday, 20th October at 8:59 pm US Eastern time.

Addendum:

With the help of dharmavati, eruthros, and thingswithwings, to whom we owe many thanks, we've been compiling nominated fandoms with chromatic creators and characters from your comments, the Yuletide Nominated Fandoms List, and the Yuletide Characters List in the Chromatic Yuletide 2010 Nominations List spreadsheet (html version).

We've been following titling and tagging conventions from yuletide and AO3 and will need help adding and verifying information, so if you have time and energy to spare, we would appreciate your assistance! The spreadsheet is set so anyone (no Google account needed) can edit, and Google Docs is designed so multiple editors can work on a document simultaneously and all their edits will update. We're currently working through the Yuletide Nominated Fandoms list, and you can check our status under Progress. We have also included a Color Key to explain the highlighted cells.

We're also maintaining a list of Chromatic Yuletide Fandom Promotion Posts here.