Bite-Sized Fandoms 2024 Rules & Info

[firebatvillain]

Hello, and welcome to Bite-Sized Fandoms Exchange, the exchange for fandoms whose canons can be read, watched, played, or otherwise experienced in 8 or fewer hours!

Quick Links:

2024 Collection | Tag Set | Sign-ups | Evidence post

Schedule:

Nominations Open: March 18, 11:59 AM

Nominations Close: March 30, 11:59 PM

Signups Open: April 1, 11:59 PM

Signups Close: April 8, 11:59 PM

Assignments Out By: April 12, 11:59 PM

Works Due: May 25, 11:59 PM

Works Revealed: June 1, 11:59 PM

Creators Revealed: June 8, 11:59 PM

*all due dates/reveals are in EST unless otherwise noted

The Premise

What's special about this exchange? In this multifandom exchange, fandoms are only eligible if they can be read/watched/played in under 8 hours. You can request and even offer these easy, bite-sized fandoms even if you aren't familiar with them yet, and pick up the fandom over the course of the exchange. Or, take this opportunity to share and create for your favorite bite-sized fandom you're already familiar with, whether it's a movie, standalone novel, music video, commercial, song, painting, or something else!

Eligibility

To be eligible, it must be possible to experience a fandom in 8 or fewer hours. Here is how to determine if a fandom is eligible:

• For Movies, TV, Podcasts, Cartoons, Music Videos, and other timed fandoms: total runtime of all seasons/films in the main fandom should be 8 or fewer hours.
• For Books & Literature, internet posts, memes, and other written fandoms: total length should be at most 500 book pages or 125,000 words.
• For Comics, Manga, Graphic Novels, Webcomics, and other sequential image panel fandoms: it should be readable in 8 hours, which means it varies depending on format. Generally, the total length should be no more than 6 manga volumes/comic trades, or 35 manga chapters/comic issues, or 1,000 fast-to-read paneled pages, or 500 full-size, text-heavy paneled pages.
• For Video Games, Board Games, Visual Novels, and other interactive media fandoms: total time for a complete playthrough that imparts significant canon knowledge should be 8 or fewer hours, as shown on howlongtobeat or demonstrated by a non-speedrun “let’s play” style video on YouTube.
• For Visual Art, Photographs, Sculpture, and other non-written, non-interactive, non-timed fandoms: approved as long as apprehending the entire work takes 8 or fewer hours.
• For Historical or Media/Actor RPF: an evidence post comment on a per-character or per-ship basis showing that the relevant media, documentary film, biography, and wikipedia/fanlore/fandom wiki pages can be read and/or watched within eight hours. This post should be linked in sign-up request details so that participants will know where to find canon. 
• For RPF not tied to historical figures or specific media: these will be approved on a case-by-case basis if it can be demonstrated in an evidence post comment that all relevant material is easy to find and can be consumed within 8 hours. This post should be linked in sign-up request details so that participants will know where to find canon. 
• Anything not covered above: will be approved on a case-by-case basis: make a comment in the evidence post!

Individual stories in anthologies count as their own fandoms. Examples include a season of True Detective, an episode of Black Mirror, or an episode of a non-serial competition-style TV show.

Exceptions will also be made for single books, movies, etc that, while technically part of a larger series, are sufficiently distinct from the greater series and can stand on their own, on a case-by-case basis.

What are the requirements for participating?

You must have an Ao3 account and be at least 18 years old to participate. When you sign up, you are committing to creating a fanfic of 1,000 words or more for your recipient during the writing period.

Nominations:

During the nominations period, you will be able to submit your nominations to the tag set. Each participant can nominate up to 10 fandoms with a maximum of 10 relationships for each fandom. Relationships and characters should be disambiguated by fandom for clarity, with (OW) being used to indicate original work nominations. Single characters should be nominated as “Solo: Character Name” in the Relationships field. Romantic relationships should be indicated with a / and platonic ones with a &. 

Example nominations:

Fandom: The Ballad of Smokin' Joe Rudeboy - Tom Cardy (Music Video)

Relationships: Bo/The Outlaw (Smokin’ Joe), Solo: The Outlaw (Smokin’ Joe), The Outlaw & The Daughter (Smokin’ Joe)

Fandom: Incompetent Time-Travelling Saxophone Haters (Tumblr Post)

Relationships: Solo: Time Travelling Assassin (Saxophone Haters)

Fandom: The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas - Ursula K. Le Guin  

Relationships: Solo: The Child (Omelas)

Sign-Ups:

Your sign-up must request at least three different fandoms up to a maximum of ten. Fandoms must be unique, i.e. if you have ten requests they must be for ten different fandoms. You must select at least one pairing or ‘Any Relationship’ per request. You may sign up with a maximum of one well-behaved sock; please ensure that your sock is not matchable to your main account. Please be courteous to other participants. We will not entertain asshole behavior.

DNWs must be listed in the Optional Details text box to be enforced—we cannot enforce DNWs that are only listed in an external letter.

In your sign-up, you should offer at least four unique fandoms. They can be the same fandoms as those you request. Before the end of the sign-up period, please check to make sure that you are matchable. It's fine if no one is offering the fandoms you're requesting (we'll take care of that with a pinch hit if necessary), but you should make sure that your offers are matchable to at least one person so that you have something to create.

Matching:

This exchange uses OR matching. Your assignment only needs to include one of your recipient’s fandoms and one of their relationships. Recipients can mention additional pairings besides those in the tag set, but inclusion of these pairings will not be enforced.

If there is anyone you do not want to be matched to, please contact the mods via Dreamwidth or email at bitesizedfandomsex@gmail.com and let us know their username and how you’d like us to handle it if they ask to pick up your pinch hit or write you a treat.

Assignments:

You must complete a story of at least 1,000 words.

Your assignment should be in a requested fandom and include at least one requested relationship/character. You only have to submit one assignment based on one of your recipient's requests, not all of them! You are not required to fill the request that you matched on if another one of their requests catches your eye. For example, it's fine if you match on your recipient's request for Genghis Khan - Miike Snow (Music Video) but decide you'd rather go with their Tetris (Video Games) prompt.

You are not required to follow the recipient’s exact suggestions or prompts, but you should respect your recipient’s DNWs. Please don't submit spitefic, we know it when we see it.

The use of LLM or other AI tools to generate works is not allowed.

Please remain anonymous until creator reveals. Please refrain from discussing which work you created, placing your work in a personal series/collection with other, revealed works, or including other identifying information while works are anonymous. You are free to do this after creator reveals!

 

Treats:
Treats do not need to meet the minimum length requirements, but should feature a requested fandom and relationship (unless the recipient has stated it's fine to do otherwise). Please follow the recipient's DNWs.

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Please feel free to contact the mods via Dreamwidth or email at bitesizedfandomsex@gmail.com if you have any questions about your assignment.

Comments

[ultra_fic]

Hi, first of all, I wanted to say I love the concept of this exchange! :) I hope to be able to sign up and take part, so I've nominated some fandoms, but I had a question as to why one of them was immediately rejected. I tried to nominate 10th Kingdom, which has a run time of a little under 7.5hrs (5 episodes, each at 1.5hrs approx.) so on that basis, I thought it should be eligible. Could you please let me know why it's not? :)

[firebatvillain]

Whoops, that was a mistake on our part when checking the runtime length. If you can provide us the tags you'd like in the tagset, we can load them in for you on our end.

[ultra_fic]

Hey, it happens - I had to double-check myself because I thought it might be borderline :)

These are the tags I would liked added please:

10th Kingdom (TV)
- Virginia Lewis/Wolf
- Virginia Lewis & Prince Wendell White (10th Kingdom)
- Solo: Wolf (10th Kingdom)

Thanks :)

[firebatvillain]

Okay, I've taken care of that now!

[ultra_fic]

Thank you very much :)

[sushiflop]

Is there any particular formatting you'd like for nominations of episodes from anthology shows? I'm hoping to nom an episode of Love Death + Robots and am unsure whether I should nominate under the name of the show itself, the name of the show hyphenated with the episode (e.g. Love Death + Robots - Swarm), or something else.

[fishdip]

"Love Death + Robots - Swarm" should be good! It will end up in the uncategorized fandoms section of the tagset, but we want to make sure the "canon" for these cases reflects which part of the canon you're requesting.

[sushiflop]

Thanks! I'm very excited for this exchange 🥰

[(Anonymous)]

Hi, one of my nominations has a tick as having been accepted, and yet it's not in the tagset. Could you check, please?

Under "Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson", I nominated Jim Hawkins/Dr. Livesey.

The character combinations is there as a Gen relationship, but I believe that was already there before I even nominated.

[firebatvillain]

Okay, we've given it a look and that ship tag should now be in the tag set as "Jim Hawkins/Dr. Livesey (Treasure Island - RLS)"

[aurorabright]

Hi mods! I was wondering how I would go about nominating a large-ish group. The media is The Vault (a webseries), and in one episode we learn about the people in the Red Vault; all counterparts and practically the opposites of our main characters. The group is clearly defined in canon -- literally just the people on the other side of the giant puzzle -- but we don't learn all of the characters' names as they're only focused on in like, one episode.

[firebatvillain]

If you'd like to nominate them as a group, not for shipping, you could identify them as a whole as "Group: Red Team (The Vault)" - while we don't normally do group noms, I think this is the only way to fit them all into tag length limit. If you'd like to nominate them for a ship, maybe something like "Group: Red Team (Ship) (The Vault)"

I think this will be unambiguous and it will get the point across to others doing sign-ups.

[aurorabright]

Great! This was pretty much my thought, haha. Glad it works!

[violet_pencil]

Sorry about the lateness of this question, but I JUST remembered this video; it's a 15 minute monologue from a Star Trek OC who serves on a non-canon starship. I think it stands alone without any specific knowledge of any canon characters or events, besides the fact that in the Star Trek universe, human society evolves into a utopia. Would I be able to nominate this?

"Starfleet Union Rep" by Steve Shives
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBVeUTTS2lk

[firebatvillain]

Looks like this is understandable as a general sci fi spaceship union rep rant. You can nominate this as a stand-alone fandom.

Just as a heads up, please only include ship/character tags in the nom that are in the video itself, and likewise with signup you should expect your writer to have watched the video and have a vague pop culture sense of Trek, but not necessarily have seen any other Trek.

[violet_pencil]

Awesome, thanks!

[briarlily]

Very last minute questions, so totally understand if they aren't answered in the next couple hours!

Are crossovers allowed if both pieces of media are under 8 hours combined? For example, two movies under 3 hours each.

What about nominating the first series of a tv show with multiple seasons? The first season wouldn't rely on knowledge of later seasons, but not sure if it's in the spirit of what you're looking for.

Thank you very much for running this! Really cool idea for an exchange and excited by the noms so far!

[firebatvillain]

Crossover fandom of two movies with a total under 8 hours: go ahead, we'll approve that.

[briarlily]

Awesome, thanks! Tried to be clear on disambiguation

[desertscribe]

Hello, I sent an email to bitesizedfandomsex@gmail.com on Saturday night and haven't heard back, so I figured I should check and make sure it didn't go astray somewhere between yahoo and gmail. Sorry to be a bother.

[firebatvillain]

Hello - we have the email in our inbox and will respond to it shortly. Thanks for the heads up, it is much appreciated.

[desertscribe]

Hi, I think my reply to your email got caught in the spam folder again or whatever happened the last time around. Would it be more expedient to just do any further communication we need through Dreamwidth?

[firebatvillain]

Oh man, thanks for the notif - ok, we have the info and will put out an updated PH post. I've also marked the convo on our email client so it should all be whitelisted going forward.