Reading

Entry tags:

2025,
nominations

Nominations are closed! Approvals are ongoing.

Nominations are closed, but please don't worry if your tags haven't been processed yet. The schedule includes three days for me to finish that up before signups open :)

If I have any questions about the lingering tags, I'll make a clarification post, so stay tuned!

Entry tags:

pinch hits

Reveals Delayed to September 14; Post-Deadline Pinch Hits #48-49

Thank you very much to all our post-deadline pinch hitters who have created gifts!

As not all pinch hits have been claimed yet, reveals will be delayed to September 14, 11:59PM UTC.

The new due date for pinch hits is September 12, 11:59PM UTC.

~~( PH 48 - Hazbin Hotel (Cartoon), Hazbin Hotel (Cartoon), 黄金の太陽 | Golden Sun Series, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga) )~~

~~( PH 49 - Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses, 鸣潮 | Wuthering Waves (Video Game), Limbus Company (Video Game) )~~

To claim a PH, please comment here or email marriageex@gmail.com with your AO3 name and the number of the PH. We may not be able to immediately respond to pinch hit claims, but will get to them as soon as we’re able.

Comments on this post are screened.

If you might be working on something for one of these recipients but can't claim the PH yet, it would be helpful to let me know.

Entry tags:

2025,
2026

Tag Suggestions for Battleship 2026 Now Open!

Tag suggestions for Battleship 2026 are now open! Anyone can suggest tags, even if they did or did not earn a tag in Battleship 2025, or even if they weren't on a team.

Suggest tags using this Google form. This (anonymous) form allows us to see how popular any particular tag is, which may be one of several considerations while compiling the 2026 tagset. The form allows you to submit up to 5 tags at once. If you want to suggest more tags, fill out the form again! You may suggest as many tags as you like, including tags already suggested by others, but please only do so once for each tag.

View submitted tag suggestions here, in the same spreadsheet as tag claims.

If you want to support tags already on the suggestions list, please use the existing wording so they are counted properly (ex. if "POV Outsider" was suggested twice and "Outsider POV" was suggested three times, we may not see that the concept was suggested five times total).

Tag claims are still open! If you were on Team Pear or Team Strawberry, or if you were on Team Grape or Team Lemon and completed two treats by the end of the anon period, or if you completed a rare tag bingo card by the end of the anon period, you earned a tag claim. These claims stack! Claim your tags here.

Tag suggestions and tag claims both close on December 1, 2025 at 11:59 PM EST (December 2 at 4:59 AM UTC).

Entry tags:

2025,
nominations

Trick or Treat 2025 Nominations Open! 🎃

Welcome back to Trick or Treat! Nominations are open until September 8 at 7:59 PM EDT/23:59 UTC. Please read this post before nominating!

Countdown until nominations end.

Here is this year's tag set! You may nominate up to 8 fandoms with 8 characters or relationships in each.

Nominations format

You can nominate characters and/or relationships under each fandom you nominate. For AO3 matching algorithm reasons, both characters and relationships are nominated under the “Characters” slot in the tag set, and relationships should be specified by including “Ship:” in front of the pairing, whether romantic/sexual or platonic.

All fandoms in the tag set need to be nominated with at least one character or relationship tag under that fandom.

For all tags:
Please nominate original works under the fandom Original Work. If you don't specify a character's gender in the tag, you're leaving it up to the creator to choose.

Please avoid using pipes where possible and do not use diacritics/tone marks where unnecessary.

All character and ship nominations must be disambiguated. (See below for an explanation!)

Please use the name order as in the canon ("Given Name Family Name" for most western canons, "Family Name Given Name" for most Asian canons).

For relationship tags:
Relationships must include "Ship:" in front of the pairing.

You may nominate / or & relationships. "A/B" is a romantic or sexual relationship; "A & B" is a platonic relationship.

Please alphabetize ships by family name.

Please nominate crossovers under the fandom Crossover Fandom, with ships in the format:
Ship: Yuri Plisetsky (YOI) & Rajah (Aladdin).

You cannot nominate both / and & in a single tag. This means any nominations like "Ship: Aerith/Tifa & Cloud (FFVII)" will be rejected.

What is disambiguation?

This means adding the fandom in brackets after your nomination. Some examples:

Sakurayashiki Kaoru (SK8)
Leia Organa (SWOT)
Luke Skywalker (SWST)
Ship: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson (BBC Sherlock)
Ship: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson (Sherlock Holmes - ACD)
Ship: Mia Fey/Phoenix Wright (Ace Attorney)
Ship: Enoshima Junko/Tsumiki Mikan (DR Hope's Peak)
Ship: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers (Marvel 616)

Before nominating, please check if your fandom is already in the tagset, and what disambiguations were used. Your nominations get approved faster if they are already in the correct format.

Specific Fandom Nomination Guidelines

Updated per feedback for 2025: Please nominate all MCU movies and Marvel TV shows under Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Updated per feedback for 2025: Please nominate Dimension 20 campaigns separately according to continuity.

Updated per feedback for 2025: Please nominate FFVII Remake/Rebirth separately from Compilation of FFVII.

Marvel Comics should be nominated by the characters' native universe, e.g. Marvel 616.

DC Comics should be nominated together under DCU (Comics). You may specify timeline (e.g. Pre-Flashpoint) in the disambiguation.

Arrowverse TV shows should be nominated together under DC's Arrowverse. Superman & Lois is separate.

All DCEU movies should be nominated together under DC Extended Universe.

Baldur's Gate games should be nominated together as Baldur's Gate (Video Games). "Tav" or "Dark Urge" are the main character of BG3. "Charname" is the main character of BG1 or 2. "Original Character(s)" are not player characters.

Buffyverse (TV) consists of the television shows for both Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV) and Angel: The Series.

Doctor Who is divided between 1963, 2005, and Torchwood.

Danganronpa has the original continuity ("Danganronpa - Hope’s Peak Arc") while Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony is separate.

Dragon Age should be nominated as Dragon Age - All Media Types.

If you've read this far down the post, please comment with your favorite spooky creature. This doesn't mean anything, it's just for fun.

Star Trek should be divided by show, with Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies) separate.

Star Wars should be divided into Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, the standalone movies, then the individual properties, e.g. The Mandalorian (TV).

Ace Attorney and The Great Ace Attorney are two separate fandoms. Please use localized names where applicable, i.e, "Miles Edgeworth" and "Herlock Sholmes."

Code deploy happening shortly

Per the dw_news post regarding the MS/TN blocks, we are doing a small code push shortly in order to get the code live. As per usual, please let us know if you see anything wonky.

There is some code cleanup we've been doing that is going out with this push but I don't think there is any new/reworked functionality, so it should be pretty invisible if all goes well.

Mississippi site block, plus a small restriction on Tennessee new accounts

A reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.

The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.

In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.

The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.

Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.

Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.

Entry tags:

2025

Reveals Delayed to September 7; PDPHs #32, 48-49, 52

Thank you very much to all our post-deadline pinch hitters who have submitted a gift or are still working on a gift!

As not all pinch hits have been claimed yet, reveals will be delayed to September 7, 11:59PM UTC.

The new due date for pinch hits is September 5, 11:59PM UTC.

Open pinch hits #32, 48-49, 52 are viewable here. If you might be working on something for one of these recipients but can't claim the PH yet, it would be helpful to let me know. (Edited to add: screening now turned on for this post)

Entry tags:

2025,
pinch hits

Current PDPHs #32, 46, 48-49, New PDPH #52

Thank you very much to all our post-deadline pinch hitters who are currently working on gifts!

We have 4 existing and 1 new post-deadline pinch hits. These are due August 29, 11:59 pm UTC (countdown), or negotiable.
Reveals are currently scheduled for August 31.

~~( PH 32 - ダンジョン飯 | Dungeon Meshi | Delicious in Dungeon, Critical Role (Web Series), Bridgerton (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) )~~

( PH 46 - 逆転裁判 | Gyakuten Saiban | Ace Attorney, Dishonored (Video Games), Dishonored (Video Games), Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga, Girl Genius (Webcomic), Lackadaisy (Webcomic), The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom, Psychonauts (Video Games) )

( PH 48 - Hazbin Hotel (Cartoon), Hazbin Hotel (Cartoon), 黄金の太陽 | Golden Sun Series, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga) )

( PH 49 - Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses, 鸣潮 | Wuthering Waves (Video Game), Limbus Company (Video Game) )

( PH 52 - Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Noctilucent: Before Dawn (Video Game), 原神 | Genshin Impact (Video Game), 너의 스탯이 보여! | Show Me Your Stats! (Webcomic), Valdemar Series - Mercedes Lackey )

To claim a PH, please comment here or email marriageex@gmail.com with your AO3 name and the number of the PH. We may not be able to immediately respond to pinch hit claims, but will get to them as soon as we’re able. Comments on this post are screened.

Current Mood: excited

Entry tags:

SW Rares 2025 Schedule and FAQ

Hello and welcome to another year of rarepair love in a galaxy far far away! Your main mod this year is

sassysnowperson, with

equusgirl (nightingalesighs on Discord) as assistant mod. The schedule has changed a little this year; y'all had so much fun with the bingo challenge in years past that we are extending the treating period to two weeks. More information will be posted at a later date. Please read the rules and the upcoming nominations post carefully, even if you have done this exchange in previous years!

I can't wait to see all the works that will come out of this year's exchange!

Main Exchange Info

AO3 Collection • Tag Set • Discord Server Invite • Sign-Up Form [coming soon] • Readable/Searchable Request Summary [coming soon]

Schedule
Nominations - September 12-21 11:59 PM EST (may open early on the 13th)
Sign-Ups - September 24 - October 4 11:59 PM EST (May open early)
Assignments Out - October 6 9:00PM EST (May send earlier)
Assignments Due - November 22 11:59PM EST
Work Reveals - December 6 11:59PM EST
Author Reveals - December 13 11:59PM EST

New to exchanges? Feeling overwhelmed? We've got a new Exchange 101 post, it might help to read through that, then come back here for instructions specific to the 2024 exchange.

( Nominations )

( Signing Up and Assignments )

( Gifts and Posting )

( Pinch Hits and Treats )

( Comments and Defaulting )

( FAQ )

Any questions, please leave them below! Anon is on.