[The folks at holly_poly wanted a little exchange primer for people who haven't done things before, and since I'm helping out a little bit on their socials side, I thought I'd put one together, based on my extensive experience over the years in participating. If you've never taken part in one, I highly recommend it, they're fun. And if you have additional information to contribute, please do!]


So, you're thinking about participating in a fandom exchange, and you're not entirely sure how this process all goes? Don't worry. Here's a walkthrough of what exchange participation looks like, from the first parts of nominations to the joys of reveals. Since a fair number of exchanges are run on the Archive of Our Own, this guide assumes you already have an account there to sign up with. If not, they're free to get, but they might take a little while to get to you in the queue, so getting one now, before the meat of an exchange starts, will ensure that you're ready to participate.

Let's get into it with the first phase of an exchange - nominations.

Nominations

Nominations is the part of the exchange where you get to suggest what kinds of things should be included in the exchange's tag set. Nominating does not obligate you to sign up afterward, but a lot of people will if their nominations get through because then they know they'll have something they'll be excited to write about. Most nominations are also finite, so even if you're brimming with things you want to see, you'll only get to put in so many into the tag set.

Nominations have to fit the exchange's focus and format. For something that's just a general exchange, anything might be possible, but most exchanges focus on specific fandoms, characters, situations, or relationships. Holly Poly, for example, is a polyamory-focused exchange. Holly Poly nominations must include more than two entities in them, otherwise it wouldn't be a polyamorous relationship. And since it's about polyamory, they want "/"-type relationships that are romantic or sexual, rather than "&"-type relationships that are platonic and don't have romantic or sexual components to them. If I Fics, I Sits, however, says that anything can be done, so long as there's a cat in the relationship, since it's focused on cats.

Where possible, try to use the canonical tag on AO3 for nominating. Two things to remember when you're doing nominations for Holly Poly or any other exchange hosted on AO3:

1. AO3 does not do ship names, so if what you want is Zutaraang, you have to put in "Zuko/Katara/Aang." Yes, they make you spell it out.
2. All canonical AO3 ships are in alphabetical order, by last name, if the character has one, and by their only name if not, so that Zutaraang relationship is in the AO3 database as "Aang/Katara/Zuko". The autocomplete can try to help you some if you put in at least one of the participants, but you'll have to wade through the dropdown to get to the thing you want if AO3 thinks you're looking for something else first.

Make sure you also check anything the exchange mod has posted about any deviations they might be making from AO3 canonical tags for their exchange. Sometimes a tag tries to slide into another place and the mod has to change the tag to make it stay in place, or separate shows / games set in the same continuity are being combined into a single universe tag. Or exchange moderators will ask you to nominate the most specific version of the character or relationship as possible, because characters and their relationships do change between media adaptations, and sometimes fans have strong opinions about which version they want to see.

Once you've nominated, keep your eyes out for any "clarifications" posts, because those happen when the exchange moderators detail the problems they're having with nominations. It can be something as simple as having nominated characters and relationships under the incorrect fandom, and sometimes it's as complex as trying to disambiguate which of the six canonical versions of a spandex-clad superhero was intended in a nomination, or whether it will be up to the people signing up to work it out for themselves which one they want. If you're the nominator, then you get to provide additional information to help the moderators place your nomination correctly. Moderators will also usually provide a threat to make sure that information comes in a timely manner, with the idea that either a nomination will be selected to be something, or the nomination will be rejected from the tagset, if clarifying information doesn't arrive by the deadline.

Signups

Set some time aside when it's time to do sign-ups.

More than that.

Still more.

Why? Because unless you're here only for the things you nominated and nothing else, you're going to want to spend some time looking at the tag set. Even if you are here just for the things you nominated and nothing else, you want to look at the tag set. There are a lot of gems in there, from properties you haven't thought of in years, or other popular things, or pairings that you might not have thought of initially, but there's a germ of an idea in your head about what you could write if you were assigned that, and now you're interested.

I'd also look in on the Crossovers and the Original Works tags, if you want to see some of the really fun ways that people imagine relationships and what kinds of worlds they envision or want to collide together. Original Works is also where a lot of the Omegaverse prompts live, but even if you're not an Omegaverse fan, some of the prompts in there can be creative sparks without having to try and figure out how to make existing characters work with it.

If you don't have enough from your nominations and the tag set by itself, some people start looking at the sign-up summaries, once they're posted, to see what other people have posted in their optional details field. It's still true that Optional Details Are Optional, but hearing someone describe what they do and don't want to happen in a work can help someone decide whether they want to offer that combination, or possibly stay away from it if the person who is offering it has Do Not Wants that would conflict if they were assigned that recipient.

Between nominations, tag set looking, and sign-up summary reading, it should be possible to build enough things to request and offer that meet the minimum requirements the exchange has set forth. So let's look at the sign-up form. It's split into two major sections: requests (what you would like to get) and offers (what you're willing to make for a potential recipient). There's a minimum number of each that you'll have to provide to successfully sign up for the exchange. The AO3 matching code works better with more options than fewer, so signing up with as much as you can is preferable to signing up with the minimums, but you should always only sign up with things you'll want to create or receive. The AO3 matching algorithm has the Bastard's sense of humor, and if you put in something that you're only half-hearted about, it will ensure that you match with your recipient or your gifter on that thing and nothing else.

On the requests side, the form will ask you for what fandom your request is in, then what relationship(s) from that fandom you're requesting. Both fandom and relationships should match exactly what's in the tag set, or your sign-up will be rejected with errors. The autocomplete dropdown will try to help you get the exact tag from the tag set, but on those rare occasions where the dropdown isn't helpful, copying and pasting the tag exactly as it is from the tagset should still allow it to go through.

After that, choose from the tickyboxes about what kind of thing you would like to receive. Common items there are fic (written), art (still drawings and/or comics,), vids (video content, usually re-cut footage set to music or some other audio track), and podfic (an audio track recorded by the gifter or the gifter and others). Most exchanges, if they're not specifically about vids or podfic, will usually just have fic and art in this space.

After saying which fandom you want, which relationship(s) you want, and what form you'd like to receive a gift in, there's the Optional Details section. The first rule about Optional Details is that they are optional. The person who is creating for you is not obligated to follow any of your optional details, but many people who are looking to make gifts will find those details useful to give them a direction to go in. A good reason to provide optional details in some form is that if you don't, the person gifting you the work is likely to write what they will enjoy, and there's no guarantee that your tastes will line up completely, even if you match in the algorithm. If you don't leave anything as a guide, you are tempting fate, and if I haven't mentioned it enough already, the AO3 algorithm has the Bastard's sense of humor and will give you someone who can complete an assignment that fulfills all the requirements and may not be anything like what you wanted.

The one exception usually granted to the Optional Details Are Optional (ODAO) rule is the Do Not Wants (DNW). Do Not Wants are the stuff that if it appears in a gift work will sour it immediately and permanently, no matter how well it's done, how tastefully it might be done, or how small the quantity of it is. You know people who have allergies so severe that they go into anaphylaxis even at the slightest inclusion of an ingredient in their meal or the presence of it in their environment? That thing that causes them such problems is a Do Not Want. It's poor form to use your Do Not Wants to box your gifter in to giving you something that is extra-tailored to you, if those things really aren't Do Not Wants, and some exchanges will say explicitly that they won't enforce Do Not Wants they consider unreasonable. Better to say what you do want and hope your gifter will follow that and leave the Do Not Wants for those specific things that will just turn you off the gift completely.

In your Optional Details, you can also indicate whether you'd like to receive treats, works created by someone other than your assigned gifter that otherwise meet the requirements of the exchange. Treats are generally pretty neat to receive, but sometimes a person doesn't want them, for their own reasons. If you do want treats, you'll also want to make sure that your AO3 account preferences have "Allow anyone to gift me works" checked, or any possible treats will fizzle.

The last field on the requests side is a place to link to your "Dear Creator" letter. Some people find it easier to put all of their optional details into a single entry, whether on Dreamwidth or Tumblr or somewhere else, and then point their gifter to that letter for things like what they like, what they dislike, possible prompts for their gifter to work off of, and the like. The "Dear Creator" letter is considered to be part of the Optional Details, and many times, exchange moderators say they won't enforce any Do Not Wants in a creator letter, because the letter itself is not required to be read, so make sure that you put your DNWs in the Optional Details box, just to be safe.

Okay, time for the offers side. The offers side works mostly the same way as the requests side, with choosing a fandom, relationship(s), and media, but for what you want to offer to someone else. Same rules apply about only offering what you want to create, because the AO3 matching algorithm is even more perverse on this side of the sheet than it is for request matches. It will almost unerringly choose the one that you were least enthusiastic about. The optional details field may still be Optional Details, but in some places it's re-titled as "Notes to Mods." This may be a place where you can mention if there are particular users that you don't want to match with, for whatever reasons you may have for this. There's no guarantees that such preferences can be accommodated, but those who are forewarned will do their best.

Once you've made your sign-up list and put in your details, click submit and wait. If you've forgotten something, or AO3 balks at something, the sign-up form will return, with highlighted spots where the errors are. If you succeed, you'll go to the sign-up summary page, and you'll see your own sign-up now in the list for other people to peruse and see if they can gather anything from your sign-up to assist their own.

Your Assignment

In normal circumstances, the AO3 algorithms will generate matches in such a way that every valid sign-up set will have one match of a fandom/pairing/medium trio in their requests with a fandom/pairing/medium trio in someone else's offers. In rare situations, a sign-up's request set may have no matches in anyone's offer set, or might only be able to match with someone who has already been matched with someone. In such rare cases, the moderators will reach out to the unmatched user and ask if they want to add requests to their sign-up. Adding additional requests and re-running matching often reshuffles everything so that everyone is matched. On the occasion that someone isn't matchable and doesn't change their sign-up, they'll usually head to the pinch hit list.

In any case, after matching, you should receive an e-mail from AO3 with your assignment for the exchange. Your recipient has matched you on at least one fandom/pairing/medium trio. Sometimes it's only one, sometimes there's more than one compatible match in the set. Your responsibility, once you have an assignment, is to produce a new work that meets one of the requests on the list, avoids the stated DNWs, and is sufficiently long/detailed to meet the requirements of the exchange. You don't necessarily have to create the thing that you matched on if something else catches your fancy, but you do have to create something off the request list put in front of you. The match is there to make sure there's at least one thing on the list that you said you wanted to create and they said they wanted to receive.

Your assignment is a secret.

Your assignment is a secret.

Because there's a good chance that you're in the same social spaces as your recipient, and you don't want to spoil the surprise! Even oblique hints about what you're creating might be enough for your recipient to deduce that you're their gifter. Run silent, run secret. The secret period extends from your assignment through the reveals of the works to the point where the authors of the works are revealed. Therefore, in your assignment, you cannot use the Notes or any other means to identify yourself as the creator of the work. Not even obliquely. Don't talk about the work anywhere during the anonymous period. Don't reveal who your recipient is.

If you have questions about your assignment, or need clarification on anything, contact your exchange moderators. If needed, they'll relay your question to your recipient, usually with some obfuscation in the form of other relevant questions to their sign-up and requests so as not to tip off the recipient about which of the things being asked about is the important one. Then they'll relay the response back to you.

Your assignment also comes with a deadline. Your completed work that conforms to the requirements of the exchange must be submitted to AO3 before the time posted as the deadline. The deadline is often something like midnight or 11:59pm on a specific day, but check the time zone. If it's UTC, that may mean you have more (or less) time than you think. I generally try to have my assignment done and submitted the day before the stated day of the deadline, just so that I don't potentially trip over any time zone issues.

To fulfill your assignment, you'll need to log in to AO3, and then choose "My Assignments" or "Assignments". You'll be presented with a list of all the exchanges you've received an assignment for. Scroll to the right assignment and click "Fulfill". At this point, you'll be taken to the AO3 New Work page, with a couple of key details already filled in about what exchange you are submitting this to, and who the gift recipient will be for the work. Everything else you fill in just as you would for any other AO3 work, with one exception. AO3's anonymity mask does not extend to series. If you put your work as part of a series, your recipient can click on the series title and be brought to the series page, with the author of the series unmasked, spoiling the anonymity. Series must be edited in after the anonymous author period expires.

If you know you're not going to get something done in time, or that you can't make the requirements, on your assignment page, there's a "Default" button next to the "fulfill" button. Most exchanges have a "no-fault default" deadline around a week before the deadline. Defaulting on your assignment means that you're saying you're not going to be able to complete something on time that meets the requirements. It happens, whether it's the well of creativity running completely dry, or life events conspiring to ensure that you have no time to complete your assignment, or any other reason. If you're not going to make it, and you know you're not going to make it, hit the default button as soon as you're sure. Doing it before the default deadline usually means you won't incur any penalty or be required to do make-up work before you can sign up for the next incarnation of the exchange. Default after the default deadline, or miss the assignment deadline, or turn something in that doesn't meet the requirements or hits someone's Do Not Wants will also likely incur a default, and there's a strong likelihood that you'll have to sit out an exchange round, or complete your assignment properly and give it as a gift, or otherwise pay a penalty of some sort before you're allowed to sign up again. Eject at the earliest point you are certain you can't complete the assignment to avoid being penalized for it.

Pinch-Hits

("Pinch hits" here refers to the baseball practice of substituting a different batter for the scheduled batter in the lineup, usually because the pinch hitter will have a higher chance of successfully getting on base and generating scoring potential.)

Every unmatchable assignment and recipient who has their gifter default and who has not defaulted themselves gets put on a list of people who need to have someone give them a gift. (Most exchanges run on the rule of "If you complete your assignment and gift someone else a work, then you must also receive at least one gift work based on your own requests.") This is the pinch hit list. ("Initial" pinch hits are unmatchable assignments, and "post-deadline" pinch hits are those that happen after the assignment deadline.)

Pinch hits are usually posted to a specific place, and will contain the entire requests portion of the sign-up for all interested parties to look at and make decisions about. Pinch-hitters are not limited to those who have signed up, but those who have signed up can collect pinch hits. (There may be a rule that you have to have completed and submitted your assignment before you can have a pinch hit assigned to you.) Initial pinch hits and early defaults will usually have the same deadline imposed on the pinch-hitter as regular assignments. As the assignment deadline approaches, pinch-hit deadlines will start to move past the initial deadline, but they will try to stay close to it. Pinch-hitters are often very good at turning around works quickly, sometimes because they see the request and go "oh, I know exactly what to do with that."

This may seem obvious, but no, you cannot pick up your own pinch hit. Even if it seems like that would be the easiest and most effective way of making sure it gets filled.

Betas

No, not the Omegaverse ones. Beta-readers.

It's not required, but it is recommended that if you have the time to do so, you run your assignment's draft form(s) past another pair of eyes to catch things like spelling, punctuation, and grammar (SPaG) errors, to have someone with lived experience in a specific community read the work to make sure that it doesn't perpetuate awful stereotypes about that community (sensitivity reading), or to see if the plot coheres and the timelines work, and the characterization makes sense for the fandom, and other such things that will improve the quality of the end product. There may be channels and places where you can make these requests, but remember, your assignment is secret. You cannot directly advertise for a beta because you might be tipping off your recipient with your request.

The Yuletide exchange has created the "hippo" system to deal with the necessities of keeping assignments secret while also getting beta requests publicized, and most other exchanges use a similar system. The "hippo" is usually someone with a specific role, whose purpose is to obfuscate who is making the beta request. Use private messaging to tell the hippo the important details of who your recipient is, what you need for your work, how long the work is, and what the turnaround time you need for the betaing is. Longer turnaround times have higher success rates, because most hippos are also working on assignments. The hippo will then make a post to the channel / community, passing along those details and asking for interested parties to message them directly and privately with their interest. On the high likelihood that the recipient offers to beta, so long as there are others willing to offer and one of them is selected, the hippo can politely decline the recipient with the excuse of "another's offer has been accepted," preserving the anonymity of the exchange, with the recipient none the wiser that they've offered to beta their own gift.

If you can, getting a beta reader / viewer is helpful and often can make the final product stronger. But it does require you to be more on top of your assignments such that you can take advantage of the extra time for polish. For some people, this will be impossible, which is why betas are usually recommended rather than required for your gift works.

Reveals!

Once everyone who has completed an assignment has a gift, the deadline has passed, and the exchange maintainers and moderators have checked and made sure that all of the gifts themselves meet the requirements of the exchange, the works are released!

However! The authors of the works are not. This is to preserve a period of time where the recipient, the participants, and any and all interested parties can enjoy the works without having their enjoyment influenced by whether or not the creator is well-known, a Big Name, a Professional Name using a pseudonym, or any other factors where the prestige of the person doing the work might overshadow the work and the work's enjoyment itself. During the anonymous period, any comments on the work by the work author will be noted as "Anonymous Creator."

In the rare case where a work is incomplete and was not caught by the exchange maintainers, or steps on a Do Not Want and wasn't caught by the exchange maintainers, let the exchange maintainers know as soon as possible! That will likely produce an emergency pinch hit need, but everyone is supposed to have a gift that meets the requirements and avoids the Do Not Wants.

By accident, I did a work that trod upon a Do Not Want. The recipient let the exchange creators know, and in this case, thought the work was excellent and accepted it and enjoyed it, but still let the maintainers know, so that I was duly chastised about it. I did offer to write something that would not be that, but it was not required of me. When I wrote something that hadn't been requested by a recipient, and they pointed this out, I wrote something that did match, with a certain amount of cussing out my inability to read. These things do happen, and they are often accidents, so giving the opportunity to make things right as soon as possible is the best thing for everyone.

If you have received a gift that conforms to the requirements of the exchange, it is customary to leave an indication that you have viewed/listened to the work that someone has gifted you. For some exchanges, more may be required of you, such as leaving a comment on the gift work, but the customary indication of something having been enjoyed, even if without any further comment, is the kudos button. Comments are lovely and very much appreciated by creators, but we also know that sometimes the recipient doesn't have anything to say, or doesn't feel like they can put it down in a coherent comment. All the same, please do indicate that you have at least viewed/listened to the work in question.

Once you've gone through your gift work (or works), then it's time to explore the rest of the collection! There might be more things in there with your favorite fandoms and ships, or you might discover a new ship or fandom to check out by reading the works in the collection. While the anonymous author period is still going on, you won't know who made it, but sometimes it's a good challenge to try and get through as much as you can before the author reveals happen.

Some writers also take this opportunity to manually set the date of publication for their work. In a fast-moving fandom or a popular ship, things can fall off the first page of "Arranged By Date" very quickly. With the period of time between when something is submitted and when reveals of works are, a work might finally appear on page two or three once reveals happen. Generally, if a work is being re-dated from the original submnission date, it can be brought forward to the reveal date of the works, so it will have the opportunity to at least exist for a little while on the front page. (For less popular ships, even with the delay, the work might still be the top of the first page. You never know.)

Author Reveals!

Usually seven days after the works are revealed, the author anonymity period ends, and you can see who all the writers were. That might mean that you have some new people to follow and subscribe to. At the point the author anonymity ends, all the people who have subscriptions to you will also be notified that you've written something new, and the rest of AO3 will have the opportunity to see it regularly, instead of in the anonymous period.

With the reveal of the authors, the exchange is usually finished, with the exception of any post-event question and answer sessions or feedback requests. There's all the stories to be enjoyed, the comments and kudos to be had, and the brainstorming for what you might want to write about next time around. Or to go off with a fistful of new fandoms and possible pairings and canons to look at.

Congratulations for participating in the exchange!