Nominations Guidelines 2024

[recursivemod]

Due to the complexity of nominations, we will be nominating via a google form, and clarifications will happen via email rather than announcement on the comm. If you can't use google forms, please email us at recursiveexchange@protonmail.com and we'll sort through your nominations via email.

(Nominating directly to the tagset won't be allowed because we need lots of information and it's better if we collect it all at once. The google form saves us from data entry and you from struggling to correctly format your own tags.)

If you have any questions about nominations, please ask! We will answer comments on this post & by email.

Links

• AO3 Collection
• Nominations form
• Tagset
• Airtable grid of accepted nominations (can be filtered, sorted, and searched!)
• Opt-in/Promo post (go here to let people know you're giving permission!)

Nominating tags from last year's tagset

• The google sheet will ask you to provide the exact tag that was used last year (the easiest way to get that is to copy it from the "Full AO3 Tag" column on last year's tagset airtable here)
• We'll look up last year's info about the tag, saving you a bundle of time!
• Nomination clarifications will be done via email. For things nominated last year, you'll probably only get emailed if something is wrong — like if the permission statement was on a tumblr that no longer exists, that kind of thing.

Tagset organization and tag formatting

Specific fanworks that participants want recursed will be tags in the relationships slot using this format:

• Author: Title (Medium)

For example, a fic by wafflelate would look like:

• wafflelate: Introductions (fic)

We're using the relationships slot so that the fanwork tags will be organized in the tagset under their parent fandoms, which will make browsing the tagset and browsing requests easier! We've also provided an Airtable grid for browsing nominated fanworks, complete with links and other information. It's searchable and sortable and stuff!

The title of a work should be the title as it is on AO3/FF.net, or a short description of the work if the work is untitled. If you are nominating a non-fic work that has a medium note in a bracket, please remove note this when you are nominating. For example, TKodai has artwork titled like this on AO3:

• [Art] Time to Hit the Books!

Remove the bracketed medium, and nominate the work as:

• Time to Hit the Books!

(Otherwise we'll just end up with tags that are like "TKodai: [ART] Time to Hit the Books! (art)" and that's just silly.)

Parent Fandom Eligibility

All parent fandoms are eligible, including:

• Original Works
• RPF (of people who are famous in their own right and 18+)
• Recursive fandoms (fandoms that are themselves based around a fanwork, like Down to Agincourt or Dreaming of Sunshine)
• "All Media Types" and "& Related Fandoms" fandom tags

Ideally works to be recursed will be nominated under the canonical AO3 tag that fits them best, assuming there is a canonical tag that fits best. We may query the community or specific nominators about merging parent fandoms, but in most cases we will be happy to go with what the nominator thinks is best. Accurate parent fandoms will be most helpful for browsing nominations and requests, since the actual fandoms that works will be created for will be the nominated fanworks.

Crossovers

Crossover works should be nominated with the format "Fandom A/Fandom B" where plausible or "Multi-Fandom" where the list is simply too long. All crossover works will be put in the "Crossover Fandom" fandom on the tagset (so that you don't have to use a request slot for each crossover fic you want!) but we will use the Fandom A/Fandom B format in a searchable spreadsheet of nominations. "Multi-Fandom" works will be listed separately.

Fanwork Eligibility

Participants will be requesting recursive fic or art of specific fanworks. Eligible fanworks for this exchange must be produced in a non-professional context, and nominators must provide proof that the creator has given permission for further transformation. Any digital medium is fine!

Ineligible works:

• Professionally or commercially produced works, at the mods' discretion.
  • This includes things like Pride & Prejudice & Zombies and The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
• Single works from a fanwork series, if all the works focus on the same relationship(s) and/or main character(s).
• Whole anthologies/collections of unconnected work.
  • You may nominate specific works from anthologies/collections on their own, even if they're posted as a chapter in a larger work.
• Commissioned fanworks that weren't posted in a fannish context.
  • E.g. if you bought an artwork from an artist alley, or commissioned a fic and the work was gifted to you privately, that fanwork would be considered ineligible.
  • (If the commissioned fanwork was posted in a fannish context and the creator gave you wide discretion about what to do with the fanwork, those works would be considered eligible, even if you don't have a blanket transformative work statement.)
• Anything that's inaccessible/that you can't link to.
  • For example, fanfiction published only in a zine several decades ago that was never published online.
• Non-fannish original fiction/art/etc.
  • Anything posted on AO3 automatically counts as fannish enough.
  • For original fiction/art posted elsewhere, we might query you about if it's fannish enough.

Special Note About Incomplete Works and Incomplete Series

For this exchange, you are allowed to nominate incomplete fanworks and incomplete fanwork series. However, requests that ask for "complete this fanwork" or "write the final chapter of this incomplete fanwork" are banned.

Nominating Single Fics From Larger Series

As explained elsewhere, requests and offers in this exchange depend on tags like I want recursive fanwork about the main pairing in this fanwork (shipfic) which works fine for short works and relatively uncomplicated series. However, some series have a very large cast, full of characters and ships who get their own fics, and this round we've decided to accommodate those series by allowing individual fics from a fic series to be nominated separately if they focus on a different relationship or character than the larger series.

• For example, you would not nominate A Thousand Lights in Space, Book 3 of Down to Agincourt because all of the fics in Down to Agincourt are Dean/Castiel. Instead, you would nominate the full series as seperis: Down to Agincourt (fic series). You could use your optional details to express interest in a work focused on the events of A Thousand Lights in Space.
• But you could nominate Your Faults Had Made Me Love You More from The Accidental Warlord and His Pack series, because the series itself is mainly (or, started mainly as) Geralt/Jaskier/Eskel, but Your Faults Had Made Me Love You More has a different main character, an original female character who gets together with Lambert during the fic.

A tag for a whole series would look like this:

• inexplicifics: The Accidental Warlord and His Pack (fic series)

A tag for a single work from The Accidental Warlord and His Pack series would look like this:

• inexplicifics: [AWAU] Your Faults Had Made Me Love You More (fic series)

"AWAU" is the common abbreviation for the series (it stands for Accidental Warlord Alternate Universe) and is included in the tag A) so that if several fics from the same series are nominated, they'll group together in a list and B) to remind participants that they're still requesting the entire series, they're just using this tag to indicate their interest in the main character(s) or relationship of this fic.

Other notes:

• If there are multiple fics in the series that focus on the same secondary ship or minor main character, just nominate the first fic that focuses on them.
• The abbreviation for the series should be as short as possible, because of the 100 character limit for tags. It should probably just using the initials of the work unless there's already a standardized abbreviation for it.
• Works filling fic series tags can take place at any point during that series, even if the tag is for a specific fic — someone requesting inexplicifics: [AWAU] Your Faults Had Made Me Love You More (fic series) and the tag I want recursive fanwork about the main pairing in this fanwork (shipfic) could recieve a work set during the events of any other fic in the AWAU, for example, but it would need to be a Milena/Lambert fic.

Standards for Permission

Permission statements must meet all of these criteria:

• Permission must be given for both recursive fic and fanart.
• The permission statement must be posted on an account clearly, unambiguously associated with the account that posted the work you are nominating. (You may have to include a note with your nomination that says something like "This is definitely the author's tumblr because they link to it in the author's note of Chapter 3.")
• The permission statement must be publicly available on the internet, on a site where one doesn't need an account to see it. (For example, we won't join a discord server or accept screenshots of DMs/emails/etc.)
• The permission statement can't contain any limitations requiring participants contact the creator of the work before they can create recursive fic/art.

Some creators will have already made their position on recursive works clear — for fic writers on AO3, a blanket permission for transformative works statement on their profile is the most likely, so check there first.

For a lot of creators you will have to ask. The simplest way to get permission on a work on AO3 is to ask about it in the comments on the work. We suggest you ask for permission in a way that mentions both fic and fanart. Please be polite and considerate and be ready to take "no" for an answer!

You can't nominate a work until you have permission, so we suggest you ask as soon as you know you want to nominate a work.

Works that have been orphaned on AO3 do not need permission to nominate.

What to put in the 'Main Pairing/Characters' field

We aren't matching on what you put in the main ship/characters field, so we're just asking that you put down what you think will be helpful for participants browsing the nominations.

• You should use the format Character A/Character B for romantic/sexual relationships.
• For gen works, you can use the format Character A & Character B or you can just provide a list of characters.
• If you put "Original Work" as the parent fandom, please put in the pairing category and descriptive ship name. For example, anything along these lines: (F/F) Ghost/Nun, (Gen) Ghost & Nun, (F/F) Clara (a ghost)/Bertha (a nun)

You can find an explanation about the character category tags we'll be using to match in the rules/info post.

Information required to nominate:

• Your email — If you don't want us contacting you for nominations clarification or if you're commenting signed-in, you can leave this blank.
• Fanwork title — what is the fanwork called? For series you can use the series name. If the fanwork is untitled, a brief description or summary is fine, keeping in mind the tag we create will need to be 100 characters or less.
• Fanwork creator — What username was the fanwork posted under?
• Parent series abbreviation — This is only needed if you're nominating a specific fic inside a larger fic series. It should be as short as possible.
• Fanwork medium — Is it fic? Art? Vid? Gifset?
• Fanwork link — Where can the fanwork be found?
• Parent fandom — What fandom was the fanwork created for? Please try to use AO3 canonicals. Crossovers should be given in the format Fandom A/Fandom B, although they'll go under "Crossover Fandom" in the tagset.
• Fanwork permission link — We need a link to a place where the creator has publicly said they're okay with further transformation of their work, preferably on the same site the work is posted on or on an account the creator has linked. (The permission link will not be included in any public tagset information, it is only used for verification.)
• Main ship/characters — You will be matching on if you want fic about the main ship/characters or side characters, and also this will help people know if they're interested in the work. If you provide just a pairing, we will assume the characters in the pairing are the main characters. If you are nominating original works, please provide the pairing category at the beginning of the tag, and then the descriptive version of the ship tag. A properly formatted OW ship would look like "(F/F) Ghost/Nun" or "(Gen) Ghost & Nun"
• Additional information — Any other information you think mods need about this nomination. On the google form information put in this category is only visible to the mods.

Link to nomination google form

Comments

[muggle95]

Hi, I have a noms question: several of my works are in last year's tagset but under my old username. Do I submit as "yes, in last year's tagset" with extra note for mods that the username field and prefix should be updated? Or do I submit as "new" bc we can't spreadsheet magic copy every field from the previous tagset?

[recursivemod]

Hi! You can submit as "yes, in last year's tagset" and then just drop us a note :) If you're submitting a bunch in a row, you can just leave the note on the first nomination, since we'll see all the following noms listed together. The magic of the spreadsheet is that it makes it pretty easy to edit things, so in this case it can magically save time for both of us \o/

[muggle95]

Awesome. The username update ones seem to have gone in smoothly, but alas I seem to be the lucky one who's tripped over another problem: I asked in Discord and heard that if things have made it into the airtable, then they should already be in the tagset, but either I have found some exceptions or ao3 is giving me misleading errors about it. The ones I've found so far are

In Crossover Fandom:
Sorry! We couldn't save this request because:
These relationship tags in your request are not allowed in this challenge: Erica45 & snarkymuch: The Falcon and The Stag (fic), fringeperson: Moved by the Law of Probability (fic), tigriswolf: where there are no keepsakes (fic), EvilDime: Third Time's the Charm (fic)

And in Harry Potter - JK Rowling
Sorry! We couldn't save this request because:
These relationship tags in your request are not allowed in this challenge: Triscribe: Muddied Waters AU (fic series)

In other circumstances I have gotten confused looking at the wrong year's tagset for an exchange and then wondering why I can't request certain things, but I've double checked that I was copy-pasting from the 2024 airtable so I don't think that's the problem this time.

[recursivemod]

Thank you for moving over to Dreamwidth!! These were indeed missing from the tagset, although an hour of trying to troubleshoot did not reveal why. They're in the tagset now, and should work.