Do you love rotating your own characters in your head, and really wish someone would make content about them for you? Is someone rambling about their characters to you some of the most fun you can have in DMs? Do you love participating in exchanges that break the Ao3 sign-up form over their knee? Then have we got the perfect event for you! OC Exchange is an Ao3-based gift exchange for the Blorbos In Your Brain!
Ao3 Collection: here
Tagset: here
Discord: here
Schedule:
Tagset Nominations/Discord Opens: December 22nd
Nominations Close: January 12th
Sign-Ups: January 19th - February 2nd
Assignments: February 7th
Final Deadline: March 30th
Extension/Pinch Hitter Deadline: April 13th
Collection Reveal: April 20th
Author Reveals: May 4th
More info on its way! Follow us on Tumblr, Dreamwidth, or Bluesky to stay tuned.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
â Live Streamingâ Interactive Chatâ Private Showsâ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
Have you ever thought to yourself, âman, I sure wish someone else would write about my characters?â Are you struggling to find an exchange that accepts your OC/Canon ship requests? Do you REALLY want to read somebodyâs lore document before you crack into the creation period?
Great news: Sign-Ups are officially open for the 2025 OC EXCHANGE! Join us to request and create work based on pre-existing original characters, whether from existing media canons or brand new original worlds.
Read below the cut for more information, and please join our Discord server with any questions!
Sign-Ups will run until Sunday, February 2nd at 11:59PM EST. Assignments will go out by February 7th.
Creation period runs until Sunday, March 30th. We will allow extensions and additional pinch hitter time until April 13th.
Writers are expected to deliver a fic of minimum 3,000 words. Artists are expected to deliver art pieces as scored by the following metric, adding up to at least 3,000 points.
500 points: the first character, vehicle, or structure depicted in black (or a single color) and white.
400 points: each additional character, vehicle or structure.
200 points: each character, vehicle, or structure in full color
You are able to nominate Fandom (aka genre) and Relationship (aka subgenre) tags to be available in the tagset for signups.Â
Nominate a new genre with the format âGenre - [type] - Fandom.â E.G: âGenre - Modern - Fandomâ âGenre - Monsters - Fandomâ
Nominate new subgenre tags with the format â[type] ([genre])â E.G: âDungeons & Dragons (Fantasy)â âMinecraft Enderman (Fandom OC)â âWerewolf (Monsters)â
You may nominate up to 10 fandoms (genre), with up to 20 relationships (subgenres) per fandom.
Nominations will be open until January 12. We will have a week-long period of tagset cleanup after nominations close in order to remove duplicate tags, adjust wording, fix typos, etc.
TAGSET | DISCORD | COLLECTION
In this exchange, weâve pushed the rules of what a normal exchange sign-up looks like, so weâve created a comprehensive guide to explain what each category represents on the nominations form. An in-depth guide to signups can also be found here.
As per usual exchange sign-ups, you will opt into a number of relationship, character, and freeform tags related to your requests and offers, and youâll be matched on these. How this exchange differs from the norm is that these tags will define the genre and traits of your original characters â imagine youâre describing your character(s) with your request tags, rather than selecting the specific character.
Categories, rating, and warning all follow Ao3 standard definitions and depict the content levels and relationship types that appear in your request. You don't have to nominate these.
In an Ao3 tagset, fandom and relationship tags allow us to group together some tags within categories. So in this exchange, fandom actually means Genre, and the relationship tags represent Subgenre tags. For example, if you nominated the fandoms Horror, Romance, and Fandom OC, youâll then be able to put in âCosmic Horror,â âEnemies to Lovers,â and âMinecraft OCâ to get more specific about the type of character(s) you are requesting.
The mods may rearrange tags after nominations, delete duplicate or similar tags, or ask for clarifications in the Discord server. Please join to see and answer any potential questions about your nominations!
In order to sign up for this exchange, you will need:
An Ao3 account (if you donât already have one, nowâs a good time to go get in the queue for an invite!)
To join the Discord Server
A description of each requested character to a maximum of 500 words per character. The description should include your characterâs:
Name, age, and pronouns
Personality
Story, background, and fandom-specific information (if relevant)
Speech patterns
Description/appearance (may link to images as examples)
Relationships with other characters.
Potential likes, prompts, etc that your giftee could create for you.
A list of DNWs (things you do not want in your gift). Note that DNWs may not be used to box your gifter into creating one specific thing.
OPTIONAL: A Dear-Gifter letter with more information about your characters, prompts, etc.
Additionally, the sign-up form may seem a little complicated on first glance. Click below the Read More for further explanation!
TAGSET | DISCORD | COLLECTION
In order to begin the sign-up process, you'll need to navigate to the Ao3 Collection and select the sign-up button. You can submit your sign-up at any point and come back later to continue editing it! Sign-ups will open on January 19th.
In the sign-up form, you'll find the following fields. Let's go through each of them together.
Fandom = Genre
The first field youâll select from is the genre your OC falls under. You may select multiple â as many as are accurate to the universe your character(s) live in, up to 10. These genres are broad for a reason; youâll be able to hone in on the exact subgenres in the Relationships field.
Characters = Gift Type
There are only two options here: Fic or Art. You can request one, the other, or both!
Relationships = Subgenre
This field is for the subgenre of the âFandomâ you selected earlier. For example, if you picked Horror, Romance, and Fandom OC, youâll now be able to put in âCosmic Horror,â âEnemies to Lovers,â and âMinecraft OCâ to get more specific about the type of character(s) you are requesting.
Categories
Category is the ship type of your request. If youâre requesting a solo character with no ships, select Gen.Â
Ratings
Ratings define the Content Level of your request and OC lore. Selecting E-rated means you are opting into the potential of receiving NSFW work.
Archive Warnings
As with rating, these are to define the Content Level of your request and your OC lore. If graphic violence, major character death, etc appear in your requested universeâs lore, please tick these boxes. It will be assumed you are also willing to receive a gift containing those warnings; if this is not the case, please edit the OC lore shared so that you can remove those warnings.
If a type of content appears in your work that you feel needs warned for but does not have an option in the Archive Warnings, you may select the warning that is similar (i.e. Graphic Body Horror could fall under Graphic Violence), or you may select âChoose Not To Warn.â
NOTE: Offering Choose Not To Warn will opt you into being potentially matched with a wide variety of potentially triggering or discomforting content. Offer responsibly!
Prompt URL
You may submit a Dear Gifter letter with your signup. A letter is a link to an off-Ao3 document or webpage that contains more information about your OCs and signup that might be too long to include in the description box. Look here for an example!
Description
Here, you can enter your DNWs (Do-Not-Wants, a list of all of the things that would ruin a gift for you if they were included), likes, character information, and prompts or ideas for your gifter to create for you. As mentioned above, you can use a letter especially if you are requesting multiple OCs in one request and run out of space for all of the information. However, you must have your DNW in the Ao3 box in order for it to be enforced.
The best practice is to divide your sign-up into one request per universe (the specific setting that your characters live in; whether thatâs a pre-existing fandom or a world youâve made up) and group all of the OCs that live in that universe together. If you have a lot of OCs in one universe, or if you want to request different ratings per character or ship (e.g. if youâre okay with NSFW for three characters, but not for two others, youâd be best to split those up into different requests).Â
To be guaranteed a gift, your signup must request at least 3 unique universes OR 5 unique characters, and your offers must be matchable to another person in the exchange. If your offers are not matchable when sign-ups end, the mods will contact you with the opportunity to add more tags until you are matchable.
You may attach other pieces of relevant media, such as songs, literature, moodboards, TV shows, movies, etc. These pieces of media are not required engagement for your gifter. The only required reading is the following:
500 word max description of the OC
Relevant likes, prompt ideas, and DNWs to the OC(s) you choose to make a work about
If you have any other questions not covered here, please send us an ask here on Tumblr or join our Discord server to chat with the mods!
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
â Live Streamingâ Interactive Chatâ Private Showsâ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
The mod team is currently compiling a how-to guide regarding tagset nominations and sign-ups, and we hope thatâll answer the questions weâve received about how this exchange will look. This is definitely a complicated exchange sign-up and we want to make sure we properly explain everything, so sit tight! Weâll share it in the coming days to better show and visualize the process.
Sorry, I don't understand your explanation of the nominations at all đ
Could you please maybe rephrase it? I also don't understand how they're submitted
Okay, let me go a little more in-depth about the Ao3 nominations and signup process:
First of all, the entire exchange will be organized through Ao3 (other than communication in our discord server). In order to submit nominations for tags AND to sign up for the exchange, youâll need an Ao3 account and to access Ao3.
The exchange sign-up process works by allowing you to select and request tags from a pre-made tagset (which is a collection of characters, fandoms, freeform tags, etc). We will be building that tagset together through nominations, and you can add yours by going to the tagset and saying âi want to put in THESE tagsâ and then putting them into a form on Ao3.
(Try looking at this tagset from a previous exchange some of the mods have run; youâll see different fandoms with character and relationship tags within those fandoms!)
In our specific tagset, weâll be using the definitions of fandom/character/relationship very loosely, and instead nominate genres, themes, etc. rather than specific characters: (Because of course you arenât going to be requesting well-known existing characters â youâre requesting YOUR guy in your brain!) So youâll use those genre and character-type tags to define and describe your character.
For example, perhaps your charactersâ story takes place in a small town, contains horror elements, and an enemies-to-lovers romance. You can nominate and then select the genres âHorrorâ and âRomance,â with subgenres of âSmall Town Horrorâ and âEnemies-to-Lovers,â and the character type tags of âHumanâ and âOriginal Work.â
I hope this made more sense for you â if youâre still confused, please DM the blog off anon and I can chat more with you!
How many characters can we submit as an entry? Like for a fic you might want a fic about two or three characters, but might need to mention secondary characters. Or like, can you submit OCs from different stories? So your giftee can choose which one inspires them the most?
You will be able to sign up with a maximum of ten universes/stories â up to one per request. You are allowed to request multiple characters within a single universe, and you can mention background characters if youâd like as well!
Hi, I'm new to exchanges like these so forgive my ignorance, what does tagset nomination mean for this event?
This is a very fair question, as tag nominations might look a little strange in this exchange even for people who do participate in regular exchanges.
The tag nomination period here allows you to nominate genre, subgenre, oc types, and fandom to describe your requested characters. For example, I can nominate Horror, with the subgenre Cosmic horror, with Humanoid and Monster OCs, in my Original Work!
what are the expected gift formats? will we get more info/back story if weâre writing something opposed to drawing/editing?
You can request and offer fic or art (or both)! Everyone will signup with and receive the same amount of information regardless of requested formats. We do require character information to be concise and readable regardless of medium request â exact specifications will be released closer to signups.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
â Live Streamingâ Interactive Chatâ Private Showsâ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
