It's the third, and last official day of Jinglemas 2021. But we're not slowing down even one bit!
We have another 40 stories for you all to enjoy today!

POD 5: Generation 5
Exactly what is says on the tin. Characters from the new generation of My Little Pony.
Sunny Starscout, Izzy Moonbow, Zipp, Pipp, and Hitch!

POD 6: The Student Six.
Stories from Princess Twilight's School of Friendship, prominently featuring:
Silverstream, Yona, Ocellus, Smolder, Gallus, or Sandbar.

POD 7: Movie Characters.
Tempest Shadow, Capper, Queen Novo, and others.

POD 8: Hardmode
Very challenging prompts. Crackships, obscuring pairings, anon/human, OCs, and straight up oddities.
Hats off to the brave souls who wrote these stories! These could not have been easy. But I hope they were fun!

Don't forget to PM your recipient with a link to their gift so they can read it right away!
And add it to the Jinglemas 2021 group folder!

And this will conclude Jinglemas 2021!
Hopefully everyone will get their story by the end of today.
Otherwise, our crack team of Breezies will ensure that everyone who didn't, gets one in the next few days.

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I'm assuming Discord and Amethyst/Sparkler were hardmode, is that right?

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Let me guess: a solo story for a background character is the background characters pod and two such characters combine to become hard mode?

Now I'm ready for next year.

Now that this is all over and done with, I wonder: were there many breezy-written stories?

Very nice to see there were almost as many stories this year (113) as last year (116). The upward trajectory was never going to continue, fanfic output on the website is off a bit this year (down 1,000 fics from just under 9K to just under 8K), but it came very close!
EDIT: The three Day posts said that 37, 42 and 40 fics were expected respectively, meaning 119 together. Some are still being waited on. Guess it is more than last year, amazingly. The popularity of this tradition never ceases to amaze.

I am wondering, though, is there a reason the submissions were clustered across three days? Many stories got lost in the shuffle when there were almost 40 per day, I found. Last year, spread across six days with one pod per day (averaging 20 per day), worked better in that regard. That could have been repeated here, just with grouping some of the smaller pods of the eight together to still get them out in six days.

There's probably another reason why it was done the way it was, and which makes total sense, of course. Just an outsider's perspective, and feedback for next year.

I also liked being able to easily see how many stories per pod, to see which were the most popular without having to count the stories manually. Hey, I'm a statistics and trend ghost, it matters to me.

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I am wondering, though, is there a reason the submissions were clustered across three days? Many stories got lost in the shuffle when there were almost 40 per day, I found. Last year, spread across six days with one pod per day (averaging 20 per day), worked better in that regard. That could have been repeated here, just with grouping some of the smaller pods of the eight together to still get them out in six days.

I noticed this, too. I have my own suggestions for it, but I'll wait until until the event is over.

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There was the "usual" amount, in terms of percentage.

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There were a variety of factors that led to this distribution. A lot of it was based on past Jinglemas experiences and problems behind the scenes.

Mostly scheduling barriers, like making the deadline that much sooner to start posting on (potentially) the 22nd of December. This would push everything back and people were already miffed enough about it being promoted before Halloween. (Ultimately, the promotional period will be shortened to approximately 3 weeks to be confined to November)

Also, this would mean that some participants will have nearly a week less than others to write. And generally, the people who need the most time would be given the least by this method, since the rookies coming due first is a strategic move to help the Breezies have more time for the most likely fumbles.

And secondly, we couldn't expand in the other direction in order to give the Breezies time to finish everything before the New Year (and they have!)

And while this did lead to quite the deluge of stories over the course of the three primary days, and a lot of PM chasing of late people on my part, ultimately it prevented more problems than it created.

That said, we are always fine-tuning things, and depending on the volume of future participation, we will almost certainly try to spread things out better next time.