Crossworks 2025 sign-ups open

[morbane]

2025 sign-ups are open at AO3!

The basics

• You need an AO3 account. You can request an invite here, or contact the mod directly.


• One sign-up only per person.


• If there are things that would ruin a gift for you, please enter them in the sign-up form, in the "Do-Not-Wants and Optional Details" field, as Do Not Wants or DNWs.


• You can write prompts, if you want, but you don't have to. You can link to a longer document, a "letter", with more information about your prompts and preferences, if you want, but you don't have to. Letter links can't be added after sign-ups end. If writing a letter, please try to complete it by the time assignments go out. The preferences in your optional details can include characters and relationships, but your creator isn't bound by them - please do not request fandoms where you are only interested in a very small subset of the characters or the worldbuilding.


• You can organize your requests according to whether you'd like art or fic or both, and crossovers or fusions or both. Each request and offer must include at least one of the tags Art/Fusion, Fic/Fusion, Art/Crossover, and Fic/Crossover. Crossovers and fusions are defined at the collection.


• You must sign up with 3 (min) to 10 (max) requests, and 1 (min) to 10 (max) offers.


• Not everyone can receive treats, so please note in your optional details if treats are welcome or if you have disabled them.


• You can use the "Notes to Mod" field to tell me more about your matching preferences, or you can leave that blank. You can ask to avoid other people ("Do Not Match" requests). Please don't tell me why you wish to avoid any person. Please do tell me whether you would prefer not to receive a pinch hit or treat from a person you don't want to match with. I can't honour all preferences; if I need to read someone's optional details or Do-Not-Wants to figure out if they're compatible with your matching preferences, that's too specific, sorry. If you have blocked any other participants, you can still be assigned to receive from or create for them, so consider asking not to match to them.

How to combine fandoms, and making sure you have enough combinations

• Each of your requests and offers needs to include 2-10 fandom tags from the tag set.


• Your requests (in total) must include at least 5 different fandom tags.


• Your requests (in total) must include at least 5 different fandom combinations. (That is: Harry Potter and John Wick is one combination. A request for Harry Potter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and John Wick includes 3 different fandom combinations: HPxB, BxJW, HPxJW.)


• Your combinations cannot all require knowledge of your one favourite fandom. Ie, the five requests AxB, AxC, AxD, AxE, and AxF would all require your creator to know fandom A. You would need at least one other request that doesn't include fandom A.


• Don't put fandoms into the same request or offer if you aren't interested in all the combinations they could make. For example, if you want Harry Potter and Buffy, and also Harry Potter and John Wick, but you don't want Buffy and John Wick, putting those three in the same request would be a bad idea because your creator could have offered Buffy and John Wick but not Harry Potter. In that case, put John Wick and Buffy in two different request slots and put Harry Potter in both.


• Don't put fandoms into the same request if the combination they make wouldn't create a fusion or crossover. Examples:
  • Don't put Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small quartet in the same request as the Lioness quartet - these are subseries of the same world with shared characters and settings
  
  
  • Don't put Captain America movies in the same request as Marvel Cinematic Universe, since the Captain America movies are a subset of the Marvel Cinematic Universe
  
  
  • Don't put Mo Dao Zu Shi in the same request as The Untamed, since one is an adaptation of the other
  
  
  • It's fine to combine similar fandoms in this way in your offers, just not in requests.

"Any Other Fandom" tags

This is a BONUS wildcard system that may make it easier for you to cover all the fandom combinations you are interested in receiving. It is an optional extra: ignore it completely if you want. If you aren't interested, just don't select the "Any Other Fandom" tags.

If interested, here's how it works.

-In one of your requests, select a fandom from the tagset and "Any Other Fandom I've Requested in CW2025". This means that your creator can combine that fandom with any fandom you've ticked in any of your other requests.

-Or, in one of your requests, select "Any Other Fandom I've Requested in CW2025" and "Any Other Fandom I've Requested in CW2025 (Select Only In Combo With AOF Tag & No Other Fandoms)". This is using tags to say "Absolutely any possible 2-fandom combination is welcome as long as both fandoms appear somewhere in my requests this year".

Some examples

Normal sign-up
Request 1: Fic/Crossover, Murderbot (TV), Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold, All For The Game - Nora Sakavic, Babylon 5 (T)
Request 2: Art/Fusion, Fic/Fusion: Horus Heresy - Various Authors, Black Jewels
Request 3: Art/Fusion, Chronicles of Narnia, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Our Flag Means Death (TV)
Request 4: Fic/Fusion: Chronicles of Narnia, Moby Dick
Request 5: Fic/Fusion: Chronicles of Narnia, Psmith - P. G. Wodehouse,

Here I could get a crossover between Babylon 5 and Vorkosigan Saga, but if I got a fusion between Black Jewels and All for the Game, it would not fulfil my request.

This set-up also means that I am prompting for multiple fusions with the Chronicles of Narnia. Keeping requests 3, 4, and 5 separate is different to putting all of these fandoms in the same request - if I did that, I might get Moby Dick and Our Flag Means Death. (No shade or judgment if you think that would be great! This is purely an example.)

Using Any Other Fandom tags
Request 1: Fic/Crossover, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dark Lords of Derkholm, The Old Guard
Request 2: Art/Fusion, Fic/Fusion: Dragonriders of Pern, The Hunger Games, Black Jewels
Request 3: Art/Fusion, Chronicles of Narnia, Revolutionary Girl Utena
Request 4: Fic/Fusion: Chess (Musical), Any Other Fandom I've Requested in CW2025

This could save time because if a creator likes the musical Chess, they can combine that with any other fandom in the requests. (Only by writing a fic fusion, though).


Using Any Other Fandom tags - both of them
Request 1: Fic/Crossover, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dark Lords of Derkholm, The Old Guard, Chess (Musical)
Request 2: Art/Fusion, Fic/Fusion: Dragonriders of Pern, The Hunger Games, Black Jewels
Request 3: Art/Fusion, Chronicles of Narnia, Revolutionary Girl Utena
Request 4: Fic/Fusion: Any Other Fandom I've Requested in CW2025, Any Other Fandom I've Requested in CW2025 (Select Only In Combo With AOF Tag & No Other Fandoms)

In this case, Request 4 means I could get a fusion story between Utena and the Old Guard, Black Jewels and Narnia, or Chess (Musical) and Pern. Anything's fair game. No combination is excluded.


This is the only way "Any Other Fandom I've Requested in CW2025 (Select Only In Combo With AOF Tag & No Other Fandoms)" should be selected in your requests. It should appear as the second fandom with "Any Other Fandom I've Requested in CW2025" as the first fandom, and there should not be a third fandom in that request.

If using "Any Other Fandom I've Requested in CW2025", please list out what those fandoms are in the optional details of the request where you have selected this tag. This helps creators check they're combining the right fandoms.

Please feel free to ask if you have questions!

More tag set notes
When looking through the tag set, please keep in mind the Uncategorized fandoms in the tag set. Some of these may be fandoms you've never heard of - but some of them may just be sub-groupings of a fandom you know.

I will re-open the tag set tomorrow to allow additional nominations of 2 fandoms per person - please limit this to things you want to request. The tag set will close again within 48 hours of sign-ups closing.


App!
As sign-ups progress, karanguni's app may make it easier to find requests by fandom. This is updated on request and will say when it was last updated.


Sign-ups will end at 11:59pm EDT on 21 August.

Comments

[ultra_fic]

I assume it doesn't matter if I put connected fandoms in the same offer, just for convenience, since nobody can request those together and therefore and it won't make a matching issue... or am I wrong? Please do tell me if I am. (I love this exchange, but I could never run anything like it since my brain would implode from the complexities of the internal logic and soooooo many fandoms! lol)

[morbane]

Thanks for asking! Yes, it is fine to put connected fandoms into the same offer - just not into the same request.

[peppermint_shamrock]

So if I'm reading that right, if I want a specific crossover with Doctor Who but am not particular on which Doctor is involved, I'd need to create two requests for that, correct? i.e. Request 1: Doctor Who (1963), [Fandom B] and Request 2: Doctor Who (2005), [Fandom B].

Also, I assume the art/fusion, art/crossover, fic/fusion, fic/crossover tags are OR matched, right? If I checked all of them on a request I wouldn't be limiting my potential creators to only those who offered all four?

[morbane]

Thanks! Yes to both! If you really would rather have Doctor Who - All Media Types in the tag set, you can add it now.

[peppermint_shamrock]

Thanks for the clarification! I don't mind doing separate requests like that, I just wanted to be sure.

[(Anonymous)]

Silly question, but I'm just trying to make sure I understand correctly: Creator's Choice of Fandom in my offers means at least one of their fandoms in the request + one I pick, Creator's Choice of Fandom in my requests is at least one of my fandoms in the request + one they pick, Any Other Fandom I've Requested in CW2025 in offers and requests functions as "you can combine this with any of my fandoms", and the ultimate wild card Creator's Choice of Fandom x Any Other Fandom I've Requested in CW2025 is any one or more of mine and any one or more of theirs?

[morbane]

Yes, that's perfect!

[(Anonymous)]

Woohoo! \o/ And more specific question: Are the X-Men Alternate Timeline Movies considered related/too similar to either MCU or X-Men movies? I could see an argument about things like: Evan Peters having been in WandaVision and Agatha All Along in a Quicksilver-like capacity, but Ralph Bohner isn't actually Pietro Maximoff. Kelsey Grammer's Beast appears in after-the-credits scene for The Marvels, but may or may not actually be Beast as he appears in X-Men, because we spend zero time with him. And Patrick Stewart's Charles Xavier appeared in Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, but we know because of the musical stinger they used to introduce him that he's a live action version of the animated Charles from the 90s cartoon series.

The connections are a mess, is what I'm saying. /o\

[morbane]

Hm. Yeah, I'm not going to disqualify things based on jokey/cameo/can-be-interpreted-another-way canonical overlap. I think those are all legit except for X-Men ATM x X-Men Movieverse - am I mistaken or is that an umbrella set and a smaller set? I would also be uncertain about X-Men ATM x X-Men OTM because they both have the same starting point.

[(Anonymous)]

Oof. This is such a complicated question that I actually stopped filling out my signup to research it. /o\ The result is a Pepe Silvia board in text form. I'm so sorry.

The actual umbrella would be 20th Century Fox Marvel Movies. That includes the Chris Evans Fantastic Four, the Ben Affleck Daredevil and Jen Garner Elektra, X-Men OTM, X-Men ATM, Logan, New Mutants, Deadpool 1 and 2, and the TV shows Legion and The Gifted. (Ghost Rider is Sony, so actually goes with the Spiderverse, and Blade was New Line Cinema and thus is in a universe all by himself.)

A Pepe Silvia board with a lot of spoilers lurks here.

What we know for sure:

X-Men OTM is X-Men (2000), X2 (2003), X-Men: The Last Stand (2004), X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009).

X-Men ATM is X-Men First Class (2011), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), X-Men: Apocalypse (2016), and Dark Phoenix (2019).

Why these two timelines are clearly discrete:


1. ATM: Raven Darkholme/Mystique is adopted by Charles Xavier (and presumably his family) in 1944 and they grow up together. OTM: Charles and Mystique don't have a prior relationship. There isn't one alluded to and their interactions are basically those of strangers.
2. OTM: Emma Frost is a teenage girl at the same time as Scott Summers, both being about 16-18 in 1979 during the Three Mile Island Incident. ATM: Emma Frost is an adult woman in her early 30s in 1962.
3. ATM: Jean Grey is orphaned at eight in 1975, meets Scott Summers when they're both 16 in 1983, becomes the Dark Phoenix through an encounter in space in 1992, at which time she either dies or disappears (it's deliberately ambiguous). OTM: 14-year-old Jean Grey is recruited to join the X-Men by Xavier and Magneto in 1986. She has Dissociative Identity Disorder with a violent personality that calls itself the Phoenix that was telepathically repressed by Charles and becomes the front in 2006, leading to Jean's death.
4. OTM: Wolverine underwent the Weapon X experiment in 1979 after the death of Kayla Silverfox and escaped almost immediately after. ATM: Wolverine is undergoing the Weapon X experiment in 1983 and has been traumatized to the point of being feral when he's released by Jean Grey.

Those are just the big ones. There's a lot of smaller details that are different, too. (e.g., OTM Charles tells Wolverine that he and Magneto built Cerebro together, while in ATM, we see that Cerebro was built by Hank McCoy for the CIA.)

Definitely not set in either timeline:

Fantastic Four. They never mention the X-Men and actually have a People magazine cover suggesting that the X-Men franchise is fictional in the Fantastic Four universe.

Legion. Charles Xavier (played by Harry Lloyd) fought in World War II, married a Holocaust survivor, and had a child instead of meeting Magneto and starting a school for mutants.

The Gifted is set in a dark near future that's more in line with the dark far future depicted in Days of Future Past...which happens to have been prevented by the events of Days of Future Past.

Anybody's guess:

Deadpool (2016) and Deadpool 2 (2018) are, you know, goofy comedies with a fourth wall-breaking protagonist who is aware of and acknowledges the existence of both timelines. Like you can make a practical argument for why it can't be set in the OTM because Wade Wilson's OTM backstory is incompatible with the events of Deadpool (not least because Wade Wilson in the OTM is decapitated by Wolverine in 1979 while Deadpool is set in 2016), but it kind of seems like a lot of needless effort for a character who asks which professor Colossus is taking him to see, "McAvoy or Stewart." (Fun fact: He sees neither.)

Logan (2017) is set in a dark future where no mutants were born after 2004 and Charles Xavier accidentally killed all of the X-Men during a seizure in 2028. Which timeline is it set in? Who knows. It doesn't get into any details that'd tell you.

New Mutants (2020) has literally zero interactions with the main characters or storylines, so we have no idea which timeline it's in. It's hard to be sure when it even takes place- the only thing in it that dates it is that it's after the DVD release of Buffy the Vampire Slayer season five (so December 2003 or later).

And a tangled red string of frustration:

The Wolverine (2013) explicitly follows the events of X-Men: The Last Stand (he's haunted by flashbacks of killing Jean Grey in that film). But it also explicitly sets up the events of Days of Future Past, which follows the events of XMFC, but isn't compatible as a prequel to TLS because of the Beast of it all.

So yeah. I honestly don't know, you tell me. /o\

[(Anonymous)]

Note: I totally forgot to bother with sorting Daredevil and Elektra into a timeline. /o\ The answer is they're in the New Mutants' category of "it doesn't say either way."

[morbane]

I guess the question is, what crossovers are you interested in?

[(Anonymous)]

This is the part where I confess to my mortal and everlasting embarrassment that I just realized the rules already say it's okay to lump similar fandoms in my offers. :| Captain Oblivious: not the hero you want, just the hero pedants need. I'll be over there now. /o\

[(Anonymous)]

♥

[(Anonymous)]

Shoot, I just realized I made a mistake in my signup. I meant to ask for Airwolf and the Star Trek original series movies, but somehow I managed to request the alternate original series movies. Is there any way of fixing that? I am debirlfan. Thanks.

[morbane]

Not a problem - that should be fixed now.

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you!!!