Exchange rules [2023, superseded]

[wbv2mod]

These rules have been updated for 2024. Please see that post.

The rules for the Worldbuilding Exchange v.2 are mostly taken from the previous incarnation of this exchange.

Current round: 2023
Schedule: Schedule and links (sticky post)
Tag Set: Worldbuilding Exchange 2023 Tag Set
Collection: Worldbuilding Exchange 2023
Mod contact: worldbuildingex@gmail.com

What is "worldbuilding"?

For the purposes of this exchange, "worldbuilding" will be defined as any exploration of how a fictional world works beyond the information presented in canon. This includes (but is not limited to) more detailed extrapolation of information presented in canon, filling in gaps in the canon backstory, attempts to reconcile apparent contradictions in canon information, exploring the perspectives on canon events of characters implied to exist but not considered within the canon, and so on.

It is absolutely fine for the gift you create to be an action-adventure story/shippy fanart/etc. (provided your recipient hasn't expressed a desire for you to avoid such things), so long as there are also worldbuilding elements present in a significant way.

Participants are expected to create one of:

• Fanfiction - a complete fic of at least 1000 words
• Fanart - a finished piece of art, not on lined paper
• In-Universe Meta - a complete piece of in-universe meta of at least 1000 words

When you sign up, you will need to request at least three fandoms, and offer at least four. The maximum number for both requests and offers will be ten. You may request/offer the same fandom in more than one slot, but the total number of distinct fandoms must still be three or more (for requests) or four or more (for offers). You may request specific characters, Any or No Characters, or Original Characters, or any combination of these. If you choose Any or No Characters, this means any characters in the canon, not just in the tagset; however, you may DNW particular characters from the canon. Worldbuilding tags are requested in the relationship slot and are specific to each fandom.

Nominations

Please see above for a link to this year’s tagset. You may nominate up to five fandoms. For each fandom, there are five character slots and five "worldbuilding" slots. Because of the limitations of AO3 tag sets, we will be using the "Relationship" field for worldbuilding elements. Please do not nominate any type of actual relationship (/ or &); any such nominations will be rejected.

Fandoms

Please nominate fandoms in a way that makes it clear which canons you are looking to receive/create worldbuilding fanworks about, whether the names match AO3 canonicals or not. Unlike many other exchanges, in Worldbuilding Exchange it is expected that in some cases overlapping canons will exist within the tag set, since the worldbuilding ideas people might come up with will differ depending on which source materials they are considering.

Please check already approved tags before you start nominating, and try to be consistent with what has already been put in the tag set if your ideas are compatible.

"Original Work - [Genre]" will be allowed as a fandom. For example, "(Original Work - High Fantasy)", "(Original Work - Hard SF Space Setting)", etc.

“Creator’s Choice of Fandom” will not be allowed as a fandom.

Real Person Fiction (RPF) will not be allowed, on the grounds that "real world worldbuilding", if it means anything at all, covers essentially all forms of human intellectual enquiry from quantum cosmology to celebrity journalism, and is therefore outside the scope of a fanworks exchange. Similar arguments apply to canons which are very closely based on real events, e.g. The Crown.

Crossovers are eligible if the crossover actually happened within one or other of the canons involved, as this implies shared worldbuilding. Please provide evidence for crossover nominations, and nominate with a "fandom" tag consisting of the two crossed over canons names separated by a "/", eg "ER/Third Watch".

Characters

Please nominate only single characters in this field. Nominations for groups or relationships will be rejected.

Please disambiguate your character nominations, unless you are nominating a stand-alone fandom that does not have any adaptations, subsets, or versions of the canon, in which case you may use the existing character tag suggested by the AO3 dropdown.

You can determine whether this is the case by going to the character's landing page on AO3, which has the format https://archiveofourown.org/tags/[charactername]. (You can also reach this page by filtering on the character, and clicking on the link that is the character name at the top of the page.) If it is a common tag, and there is only one fandom listed in the box marked Parent tags, you may nominate it as written. If you’re uncertain, please disambiguate.

If there are two or more fandoms listed, such as a book fandom and its TV adaptation, please disambiguate by indicating the fandom you've nominated as clearly as possible (for example, "Amos Burton (Expanse Books)", or "Darth Vader (Obi-Wan Kenobi TV)").

You are welcome to nominate specific types of original characters that are pertinent to the fandom, for example, "Original Clayr Character (Old Kingdom)" or “Original Surface Dwarf Character (Dragon Age Inquisition).”

Unlike in the previous incarnation of this exchange, you do not have to include "Original Character(s) (Name of Fandom)" and "Any or No Characters (Name of Fandom)" amongst your nominated characters. Mods will be adding these tags for all fandoms after nominations close.

Worldbuilding

Tags for fandom-specific worldbuilding elements should be nominated in the Relationship field. Use "WB: " at the start of each of these tags, and disambiguate with the fandom name at the end (for example: "WB: Belter Culture and Customs (Expanse TV)"). Do not nominate any type of actual relationship (/ or &); any such nominations will be rejected. You may wish to look at the tagsets used in the previous incarnation of this exchange for ideas: 2022 is here, 2021 is here, and earlier tagsets can be found through the parent collection page.

All fandoms must have at least one worldbuilding tag nominated by the end of the nominations period.

Signups

How matching will work

Matching will be OR, on characters and worldbuilding elements ("Relationship" tags). That is, you will match on one (or more) character and one (or more) worldbuilding tag. From the point of view of your sign up, please ensure that you are happy to receive or create any combination that might come up. The “Any or No Characters” tag in a prompt means that the requester is leaving the use of characters (including original characters or canon characters not in the tag set) up to their creator. It should be taken to indicate an interest in receiving/creating works where the primary focus is the worldbuilding, and characters are secondary, if they appear at all.

There will also be freeform tags for the three categories of fanworks allowed in the exchange; you can sign up to receive/create between one and three of: Fanfiction, Fanart, and In-Universe Meta.

The boundary between "Fanfiction" and "In-Universe Meta" is intentionally somewhat fuzzy: if you are signing up to receive one but not the other and have strong preferences about which side of that boundary you would like your gift to be on, please make that clear in your request.

Requests (3-10)

You may make between three and ten requests, which must include at least three distinct fandoms amongst them. You can repeat fandoms in different slots as long as you have a minimum of three distinct fandoms requested overall.

For each fandom, you can request 1-8 characters (including the "Any or No Characters" tag), 1-8 worldbuilding ("Relationship") tags and one, two or all three categories of fanwork (fic, art, and in-universe meta).

You may use the AO3 optional details box and/or a separately linked letter to provide extra detail for your assigned creator about your likes and dislikes, specific prompts, etc. Alternatively, you may simply leave the tags you have selected to speak for themselves.

"Do Not Wants" (DNWs): Please ensure that anything you definitely do not want to receive is clearly stated in the AO3 optional details box. You may also repeat this information in your letter, if you write one, and provide further information on your likes and dislikes, but only DNWs in the AO3 box will be enforceable. (However, please do not use Do Not Wants in an excessive way to box your creator into making one very specific type of fanwork.)

Requests will be visible throughout the sign up period.

Offers (4-10)

You may make between four and ten offers, which must include at least four distinct fandoms amongst them. You can repeat fandoms in different slots as long as you have a minimum of four distinct fandoms offered overall.

For each fandom, you can offer 1-8 characters (including the "Any or No Characters" tag), 1-8 worldbuilding ("Relationship") tags and one, two or all three categories of fanwork (fic, art, and in-universe meta).

You may offer all tags in either or both of the Character and Worldbuilding categories for a fandom, by ticking the "Any" box. However, please be very sure before you do this. In particular, please bear in mind that "Any" Character tag includes the "Any or No Characters" tag.

If your offer turns out to be unmatchable, you will be contacted shortly after sign ups close to discuss the situation. Please try to avoid deleting your sign up if your only reason for doing so is that you are worried that you are unmatchable: it may be that you are someone else's only potential recipient.

Optional details are optional

The general exchange principle that "Optional details are optional" (ODAO) applies. Matching is on character and worldbuilding tags, on an OR basis. As a creator, the only extra details you are obliged to pay heed to beyond the tags you matched on are any "Do Not Wants" expressed in the sign up form itself. As a recipient, you should only sign up if you are comfortable with the fact that you might receive something that does not follow any of your specific suggestions beyond featuring one of your requested characters and one of your requested worldbuilding elements.

Posting

Assignment

Your assignment should be a new fanwork for your recipient, in the sense that it should not consist of work which has been previously available in public. (To give some specific examples: If you have drawerfic that is a good fit for your recip's prompts, and the exchange gives you the impetus to finish it, no one except you is going to know. If it's something you've posted large chunks of in venues such as the WIP threads on FFA, that's a problem.)

Please keep your assignment secret until creator reveals. (Artists may sign their work, but may not crosspost until creator reveals.) If you want to ask your assigned recipient (or a recipient you are considering treating) anything, please go through the mod in the first instance.

Please turn in a complete assignment on the due date. You are welcome to edit your fanwork as much as you like in the period between the due date and reveals, but please ensure that the version that exists in the archive when assignments are due -- and any subsequent version you save -- is of a quality that you would be comfortable with your recipient receiving if circumstances were to prevent you getting online again later.

Tagging

Please don’t use the worldbuilding tags used in signups (that is, the relationship tags beginning with WB) for tagging your work. If you’d like to indicate worldbuilding content, please use the freeforms (additional tags) to describe your work, for example, “Blood of Eden recruitment (Locked Tomb)”.

Defaulting

You may default for any reason at any time, by using the "Default" button on the AO3 assignments page. The only penalty will be that if you default and your assigned creator later defaults themselves, you will not go out as a pinch hit.

The "default deadline" (one week before assignments are due) exists to provide a prompt for participants to think carefully about whether they will be able to finish in time, or whether it would be better for their recipient to go out as a pinch hit with a longer period available than an at-deadline pinch hit.

Pinch Hits

Initial pinch hits generated by the matching process, and any pinch hits which become necessary due to defaults, will be posted to the exchange dreamwidth community with comments screened. Claim by commenting with your AO3 username. Comments on these posts will not be responded to; if you see that the pinch hit has been claimed and you do not have a new AO3 assignment, then unfortunately you missed out on that occasion, but please do feel free to treat the participant in question.

There is no need for potential pinch hitters to sign up to any separate pinch hit list. You may claim pinch hits even if you are not signed up to participate. Pinch hitters who are not signed up to the exchange will be invited to submit prompts for possible treating (unless they are heroic very-last-minute pinch hitters, but hopefully none of those will be needed).

Treats

Treats are very much encouraged. Treats do not have to adhere to the minimum requirements for main gifts, but should still be of a quality that you are comfortable giving as a gift.

As a creator, please respect the recipient's expressed preferences (e.g. do not give "In-Universe Meta" to someone who has not requested it).

As a recipient, if you would like to receive treats, please ensure that you have “Allow anyone to gift me works” checked in your preferences under “Collections, Challenges and Gifts.” It will help others to indicate whether you accept gifts in your signup and/or letter. If you have a preference against any particular types of fanwork that fall below the minimum requirements, please make this clear in your sign up to ensure that everyone has a happy treating experience. Since this is an exchange in which treats are encouraged, sign ups containing such preferences should not be negatively perceived as "expecting" treats.

Treats that meet the minimum requirement for main gifts may become main gifts in the extreme circumstance that we can’t find a pinch hitter in the last few days before the collection is scheduled to open. In most situations we will endeavor to find a pinch hit regardless of treats.

You may give treats even if you are not signed up to participate. Treats may be added to the archive at any time up until creators are revealed.

Acknowledge your gifts

We will continue the policy of the previous version of the exchange that participants must acknowledge their gifts in order to participate in the next round. Ideally, this will be via commenting to thank the creator for their efforts. However, contacting the mod to raise an issue, or using AO3's built in "Refuse Gift" functionality, will also be considered as acknowledgement of your gift.

Participants need not comment anything more than “Thank you”, and the only deadline for doing so is the end of next round’s sign-ups. Participants banned in the previous version of this exchange have a clean slate, and may sign up this year.

If you do not have a Dreamwidth account, you may comment anonymously, but please sign your comment in some way.

Comments

[pinkygrocket]

Can we nominate canons or parts of canons that have not been officially released?

More specifically, I'd like to nominate both Codename: Kids Next Door and Galactic Kids Next Door. GKND is a proposed sequel series to the former that was rejected by Cartoon Network executives. An official animatic and an ARG site that gives some setting/worldbuilding info was released, but nothing beyond that.

[wbv2mod]

You can't nominate a canon that hasn't been released, but you're welcome to nominate the Galactic Kids Next Door animatic as a canon. You can mention that you're open to drawing from the ARG if you request it, but we'd rather not try to lump it in with the animatic as a canon.

[pinkygrocket]

Could I nominate Codename Kids Next Door and Galactic Kids Next Door as one fandom? If so, should it be formatted as a crossover, or should I use another format?

[wbv2mod]

From what I can glean from web searches and the wiki, this doesn't really make sense to me, sorry. There's no actual canonical crossover, and these are separate things (an animated series, and a hoped-for sequel).

Would it make sense to nominate Codename Kids Next Door with a worldbuilding tag asking for Galactic Kids Next Door exploration, since GKND is presented as a branch of the Kids Next Door Organization in the series finale?

[pinkygrocket]

That works. Sorry for any confusion.