due South Seekrit Santa gift exchange

There will be four stages: nominations/signups, assignments, anonymous works revealed, and creator reveals.

Nominations and Signups (Sept 18 - Oct 14):
You can submit up to 6 characters and relationships to the tag set that you'd like to offer or receive fan works for. If the ones you want are already there, you don't have to add anything.

Relationships may be nominated as both "&" (gen) and "/" (ship) versions. For example, "Benton Fraser & Dief" is a gen relationship, and "Elaine Besbriss/Francesca Vecchio" is a shippy one. You can nominate both ship and gen in the same relationship if you want (e.g. " Elaine Besbriss/Francesca Vecchio & Harding Welsh" would include a romantic relationship with Elaine and Frannie, but Welsh's relationship with both of them would be platonic; the fan work, however, would need to include all three characters.) Gen and ship relationships are considered different for matching purposes, and you only need to write or make art for the version you offered.

Solo characters will be entered into the "Relationships" field (this is to trick AO3 into thinking they're relationships, so that both relationships and characters will be treated the same for matching purposes). You may nominate characters using the format "Character & None", for example "Stella Kowalski & None", if you want request a fan work centred on one character instead of a ship.

Nominations will continue to be open throughout the signup period, so if there's something you want to request or offer that's not in the tag set, you can add it. If you're offering "Any," please keep this in mind.

Participants will fill out an AO3 form to request and offer to create fan works for characters and relationships from the list. You'll list the characters and relationships you want to receive fan works for, with (optional, but suggested) prompts for your creator, and you will offer the ones you'd like to make fan works for. You are only guaranteed to match on one of these, and only need to create fanfic/fanart/vids for one of your recipient's requests.

If there’s any content that you don’t want to receive, i.e.: character death, or anything else, list this content as do-not-wants/DNWs in the Details box.

Assignments (Oct 17):
You'll get your assignment via the email where AO3 sends your notifications.

Check-in (Nov 15):
We'll ask participants to check in and let us know how your gift is coming along and if you might need to drop out. It's helpful if you follow us here so as not to miss announcements. This isn't mandatory but it could be handy for keeping things on track.

Anonymous reveals (Dec 24 23:59 UTC):
You'll get your gift! All fics and artwork will show up as "anonymous" for a week. Don't mention what you made! Keep it mysterious.

Author reveals (Jan 1st 2023):
Creator names will now be associated with fic and art, and you can cross post it elsewhere, link to it from your journal/tumblr, etc.