Wildcards are just failing to unpack

[Sorry-Im-Stupid]

I haven't had this before and nobody's mentioned it that I can see, but I started up A1111 today with PonyXLV6, and the wildcards are just not working.
something like this:
__color__ apple in a hand
the results are random, and I figured out why, it's because the wildcard system isn't actually choosing from the list in color, so the end result prompt fed to the AI is verbatim. And since the AI doesn't know what __color__ is...

Edit: As if especially to make a liar of me, it now works perfectly.
Sorry for wasting time.