2026 Sign-Ups Open

[morbane]

2026 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. A request with four fandom tags in it gives 6 possible combinations)


• 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. In that case, put John Wick and Buffy in two different request slots and put Harry Potter in both.


• This point has been edited! - Don't put fandoms into the same request if the combination they make wouldn't create a crossover. If you do put closely-related canons into the same request, your creator could match on them, so only do that if the combination would be unusual and you're excited about the result! Examples:
  • If you put Captain America movies in the same request as Marvel Cinematic Universe, it's up to your creator what other part of the MCU to combine with Cap's movies
  
  
  • If you put Mo Dao Zu Shi in the same request as The Untamed, you're asking your creator to make a work in which the characters from the two story versions interact with each other.

"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 CW2026". 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 CW2026" and "Any Other Fandom I've Requested in CW2026 (Select Only In Combo With AOF Tag & No Other Fandoms)". This is using tags to say "Any* possible 2-fandom combination is welcome as long as both fandoms appear somewhere in my requests this year".

*EXCEPTION - this does not include the Creator's Choice of Fandom tag. 'Other' fandom means a tag that describes a specific set of media. If you want to include Creator's Choice of Fandom in a wildcard request, select that tag in the request.

Some examples

Normal sign-up
Request 1: Fic/Crossover, Murderbot (TV), Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold, All For The Game - Nora Sakavic, Babylon 5 (TV)
Request 2: Art/Fusion, Fic/Fusion: SCP Foundation, Black Jewels
Request 3: Art/Fusion, Chronicles of Narnia, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Our Flag Means Death (TV)
Request 4: Fic/Fusion: Chronicles of Narnia, Spider-Man: Spider-Verse (Sony Animated Movies)


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 and 4 separate is different to putting all of these fandoms in the same request - if I did that, I might get Spider-Man 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, 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 CW2026

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, Creator's Choice of Fandom
Request 4: Fic/Fusion: Any Other Fandom I've Requested in CW2026, 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 - EXCEPT Creator's Choice of Fandom. In the set above, Creator's Choice of Fandom can be combined only with Narnia or Utena.


This is the only way "Any Other Fandom I've Requested in CW2026 (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 CW2026" as the first fandom. You can optionally add Creator's Choice of Fandom here, but please do not add any other fandom tags to this request.

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.

The tag set is also re-opened to allow additional nominations of 3 fandoms per person - please limit this to things you want to request. The tag set will close again within 24 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 20 June.


Changes this year

• I've clarified the way Creator's Choice of Fandom interacts with other wildcard tags.


• No AI: I already had a rule barring the use of artificial "AI" generative tools such as Claude, ChatGPT, Midjourney, and so on. However, since their use has spread wider in fandom, I want to emphasize that rule and have expanded on this topic in the FAQ. This is a developing topic in exchange space so I wanted to give clarity about my approach during sign-ups.

Comments

[lostyesterday]

Hello, I’m looking forward to signing up for this! I just wanted to let you know that it looks like all the text for the FAQ section on AO3 was pasted in twice except for the section on AI use.

[morbane]

Whoops! Thank you.

Adaptions clarification

[karios]

I wanted to ask about the no adaptions in the same request rule. I was specifically planning on at least one request of this sort this year for HPI and High Potential. I like the comedy/existential dread potential of some characters realizing they don't exist in another universe, or meetings between two versions of a character who have wildly differing personalities and even the contrast that some other characters are relatively similar. If writing out my full request blurb would help you make a ruling, I'm happy to do that, and if this just is something you'd rather not have to judge, I understand that too, but I wanted to check first.

Re: Adaptions clarification

[morbane]

Hm, I see why that would be an interesting request. I recall someone was also interested in something similar in a past year with (I think) different She-Ra versions. My difficulty is that I've also had feedback at other times that some creators would be disappointed to match on a combination like that, and don't have an easy way to avoid it if they are trying to offer widely. As a possible solution for this year, would it be OK for you to mention it as an optional detail that your creator can take you up on if they want to?

Re: Adaptions clarification

[karios]

Ah that makes sense! Yes, I'm happy to do that instead. Thanks for getting back to me :).

[(Anonymous)]

Hi, I saw your fandom calendar post and you mentioned limited nominations could still be added, is that still possible? I don't want to be a bother so wanted to check first, thank you!

[(Anonymous)]

That's fine! Go ahead.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh my gosh I didn't see the nominate button was available, I'm dumb lol thank you for the reply!